


precipitate

by Naolin



Category: Stardew Valley (Video Game)
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, F/M, POV Second Person, Recovery, Romance, Suicidal Thoughts, Video Game Mechanics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-13
Updated: 2020-01-13
Packaged: 2021-02-27 03:41:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 24,913
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22240504
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Naolin/pseuds/Naolin
Summary: Sometimes you feel like a black hole. You consume and consume and consume. Television and video games and alcohol and books. Maybe not as many books as you should.Maybe more alcohol than you should.
Relationships: Shane/Female Player (Stardew Valley)
Comments: 17
Kudos: 113
Collections: fanfics tbr for the podcast





	precipitate

**Author's Note:**

> what an absolutely absurd thing for me to have written. i'm very sorry. i don't know what my problem is.

Sometimes you feel like a black hole.

You consume and consume and consume. Television and video games and alcohol and books. Maybe not as many books as you should.

Maybe more alcohol than you should.

You're a void, a deep empty pit, one that you are both throwing things into and falling down all at once.

You hate thinking this, because it feels so fake-deep, when you know that you are a shallow man. Otherwise you would find satisfaction in yourself, in something, the way other people can. But you do not grow flowers and you do not write stories and you do not create music. You do not carve buildings out of nothing, you do not forge weapons or unearth treasure from unknown caverns. The thoughts in your head do not even make for good poetry.

You don't do anything - don't create anything.

Other people are ever-expanding galaxies, but not you.

One day at a time. You tell yourself this every morning. For a brief moment, leaving your home is refreshing; sunny and lush and green, and even the smell of the animals has become familiar, now. The flowing river floods your ears, and the sweet scent of seasonal berries is in the wind. Work is not so bad, you think, but only briefly.

By the time work is over, the sun is already setting and all it gave you were those meager scraps of your morning walk in its light. You've changed your tune, by now. The sun sets each evening, and each evening you know for a fact that you'd rather shoot yourself than go back again tomorrow.

Your time is gone, gone forever, to something you hate so much that you think about walking off the edge of a cliff without even having your first drink, yet.

You don't do it. Not tonight. But the idea sticks with you, because you want freedom, but know you would never use your time wisely enough to deserve it.

You drink. You enjoy the warm of the saloon fire place and the mock-sunset lighting it casts over the room. This is nothing like cold and dark bars in the city, but you like it better. Or maybe you just hated those bars. Maybe you just hate everything, and the only thing that makes you feel that hate a little less is alcohol, so anywhere that hands you a glass becomes your newest and purest haven.

You really did hate those city bars, though. Too dark, too loud, too crowded and too flashy.

You like listening to those idiots in the back room talk about Dungeons and Dragons. Something about the way they come to a saloon to play pool and feel mature, but always end up deep in conversation about their dice rolls and character arcs is hilarious to you.

You drink too much. You hide it well. Mostly because you're antisocial to begin with, so no one talks to you enough to hear the way you slur, to see how low your mood has plummeted. Drinking is supposed to raise your spirits, but you can feel the way they fall and fall and hit the ground hard. Your mood drops until you're filled with a vibrating sort of anger, pent up and waiting for something to burst on, but at least the sad is gone, as numb as a sore-tooth on pain-killers. Beer is a soft and bitter acid, and you've convinced yourself that you like the way it corrodes you away.

You keep drinking after the saloon closes. Sometimes by the lake, sometimes in your room.

You drink, and you fall deeper, and you stay awake as long as you can because in the morning it's all going to start again. The weight of tomorrow is heavy on your shoulders, an inescapable responsibility that makes you want to fucking die just to avoid it. It makes you feel like a child trying to get out of doing your chores, with the shame of knowing that other adults have grown out of this by now. For fuck's sake, even Jas does her chores without complaining, but here you are, suicidal over a decent job.

But you don't die. Not tonight.

***

The new girl is picking wild blackberries. You've only spoken to her once or twice since she came, last Spring. You think you scared her off. You didn't really mean to - you only realized how hard you'd snapped at her a good three hours later as you slid the millionth box onto the millionth shelf.

Oh well. Everyone else knows what you're like. There's no use pretending you're not awful. (Here's a fun game: count the friends who stayed in touch after you moved away. Count the friends you even had.)

You're the exact antithesis to a girl like her.

Pretty girl from the city with her pastel pink hair so long, you can't even imagine dealing with it at six am before doing farm work. After doing farm work. Ever at all, really, let alone tying it up in ponytails and braids and weaving flowers into them like she consistently does. Pretty girl with pretty hair, but she's got dirt smudged on her face every time you see her, and has to clean her big, round glasses with a cloth from her pocket because her shirt is just as wrecked.

She smiles and laughs too easily. Ran from her city life, she says. Not to _you_ , but you're around to overhear her. She sounds a bit distant, but you know it couldn't have been the same way you ran. Because whatever was wrong with you there followed you here, whatever you hated about the city was a part of you, and it isn't a part of her. You came here because you crashed and burned, and you're still on fire. You're still a disaster.

Not her, flourishing through trial and error.

She hands out gifts at the saloon a couple times a week, and you think there's just no fucking way a girl like that wasn't born and raised in small towns. There is no way someone who socializes with such naive sincerity has ever been alone.

She brings flowers she's grown for the first time, and undersized vegetables that, for some reason, she is still proud of. Packed meals in cute patterned boxes, but you've seen them opened, and the insides are a mess more often than not. Sometimes she brings wild berries in a basket, other times freshly gathered eggs.

("All the others didn't bloom," she says about the flowers, "and I don't know what I did wrong."

Marnie gives her spacing tips as she furiously taps them into her smart phone.

When she grows a meager cauliflower, she lifts it over her head and proclaims it "The chosen one!"

She is up on her knees on a bar-stool, singing a victory tune from a video game you've played before. You snort behind your mug, and get drowned out completely by Sam and Abigail's boisterous laughter.

Another night she admits, flustered, "I never used to cook before." Maybe this is the one she is embarrassed about because she knows that anyone can forgive a girl for not knowing how to farm or garden, but cooking should be a basic for any adult.

You're not one to talk, but you instinctively roll your eyes anyway.

Holding the gift cookies out to Pierre, she still catches you somehow, and sticks her tongue out.)

The new girl is picking wild blackberries on the side of the road, and its been a couple seasons now, so you wonder if you can still say that she's new. Newer than you, you suppose.

Her long hair is in a bun, today, and you can see the shadows of the evening creeping down the nape of her neck with strands that have fallen loose.

You've snapped at her a dozen times now, only drunk enough to have an excuse for half of them. She still offers you a handful of berries, wrapping them in a small cloth that's already stained with juice. Like her fingertips and the edges of her fingernails. Like her lips.

They're good - the blackberries. Sweet. Only a couple sour ones. You eat them on the way to the saloon.

She doesn't show up for another hour, but when she does, her hair is loose and still dripping all over her shoulders and down her back. ("Fresh from the shower," she boasts, as if bathing is something to take pride in, and Emily sort of laughs with her and sort of winces.)

You watch the patch of wetness spread all down her back as she chats with the other patrons. She doesn't drink, tonight. That's nothing strange. She doesn't drink every night - not like you. She comes for the company, sometimes for a late dinner.

Eventually the cold of her damp shirt gives her shivers, and she laughs herself away from Pam. You think you see her roll her eyes as she turns away from the woman, but she's smiling again as she steps beside you.

She draws her hair over her shoulder and turns her back to the fire. To you. Maybe she was trying to pretend not to notice you; maybe she didn't want to talk to you at all.

You don't know why you're always deciding these things for yourself. You create things to be annoyed at, then let yourself seethe.

The crackling of the fire and the murmur of other conversations don't drown out the way you laugh under your breath. Its bitterness startles you.

She looks at you over her shoulder. "How were the blackberries?" She asks. For some reason you remember the sour ones, and your mouth waters like muscle memory.

It's not like she grew them, you tell yourself, unable to shake your own irritability. "They were good," you tell her, not buzzed enough to let your poor mood bleed through like berry juice on white cloth. "You want your handkerchief back?"

"You can keep it," she says. "Or throw it out."

You are quiet. A part of you wants to be angry that she has given you this burden, but even you know that is ridiculous.

"Eventually I want sheep," she says, ponderous, and you cannot quite connect the dots of this conversation. "But I think I need to get out of the negatives with the farming first to make sure I can feed them. Oh, and then there's building the fencing and barns and stuff."

You don't know why she brings this up or why you're expected to care, so you are silent.

She does not seem to know what to do without a response from you, and so she turns to look away again. You watch her hair and shirt dry as she holds conversion with Sebastian from across the room, shouting to him at obnoxious volumes. You can't understand how it doesn't bother anyone else.

Your mood sinks deeper and deeper all night. Worse than usual, and you don't know why.

She is exhausting to listen to. This must be the culprit. She tells Sebastian about her newest baby chick, named after her short-lived dungeons and dragons character in his campaign. He scoffs and tells her how stupid it is, looking sincerely embarrassed for her.

You don't understand her dynamic with those kids, if you are honest. She is practically the same age as them, only barely older. Not enough to make a difference. But for some reason they treat her like an awkward parent, like she is perpetually just a step out of touch with them.

Her sincere enthusiasm seems to embarrass them - but you still see the way Sebastian tries to hide a smile in his shoulder with a crooked neck.

She gives Sebastian a gem. A pretty tear-shaped crystal that she digs out from her back pocket like nothing, like a packet of seeds or like spare change. Like a handkerchief.

You can't imagine her swinging the weight of a pick axe, let alone getting deep enough in the mines to find something like that. There are monsters down there. You didn't even know she could fight.

Sebastian tries to pretend it isn't jarring, tries to pretend a gift like that can be taken as casually as she gives it. You see him blushing, you hear him stammering.

You can't see her face, you can't know if she notices it too.

"It felt like such a waste to leave it down there, but I was just going to sell it. And Abigail mentioned that you liked them when I brought her something back from the mines the other day."

"It's cool," Sebastian says, then swallows thickly and clears his throat. "Better it goes to me than Abbie."

Her hair clings to her cheek, still damp on the side facing away from the fire. You watch a drop of water slide down the soft curve of her jawline as she tilts her head to the side curiously.

"Nothing," Sebastian says, averting his eyes. "What are you doing down there, if not looking for gems like this?"

You see her spine straighten up; she puffs up her chest. "That," she says, "is a secret."

You don't know what part of this exchange annoys you the most, but you ruminate on it all night. Back in your room you try to drink the night out of your mind, but the more you drink, the less you can think about anything else.

You drink and you drink and in the morning you vomit up an alarming shade of red that takes you a minute to realize is just blackberries.

It's just blackberries.

So you get off your knees and you get off the cold tile floor of the bathroom. You bully yourself into bathing, and you go to work again.

***

Your head is killing you, but you're pretty sure it's just your liver spreading its righteous fury to the rest of your body. It's too much to take, so you resentfully spend your lunch break walking to the doctor's office for pain killers. (Like hell you're giving your money to the corporate demon that steals your life a day at a time, just for a 15% employee discount. If the headache were just a little bit worse you might compromise your morals, but not today.)

Harvey looks preoccupied, but grateful for the sale. You don't blame him for looking distracted. All work is work. Any job is a job. You've had jobs you liked, back before you moved to the valley. You still hated going to them, hated doing them, hated every minute of your life because of them. (Does that ever go away? Is everyone so miserable? How do they swallow it?)

The medicine tastes bitter in your mouth as you take it in the lobby, sitting down in the waiting area because you have fifteen minutes left and there's no way a meal is going to fit in there. But you're in no hurry to get back just yet, so you loiter, and Harvey lets you without comment.

Maru comes in from the back room, holding a clipboard. Her eyes flit over you, then away without acknowledgment.

"She's fine," she tells Harvey, and this seems to lift a weight off of Harvey's shoulders. "Resting up obediently. For now."

"Did she say what happened?"

"Not too hard to guess. You know how the mines are. She said she wants to get home, so she'll probably head out in ten."

Harvey only sighs. "You told her not to strain herself, right?"

"Of course. I told her she should delegate her farm work to someone else for _at least_ a couple weeks."

"Let's hope she actually does."

You wait for longer than you have to spare, and daydream about getting fired for it.

The new girl steps out of the back room and settles her bill at the front desk. She tries to look casual when she leans against its edge, but you can see the weight behind it. Her shirt is torn wide open at her side and you see the white flash of bandages beneath it. Her sword is on her belt, and even though you've always known there are a couple adventurers around town, it's still a surreal sight in the middle of the doctor's waiting room.

Her eyes met yours when she's halfway to the door. Less observant than Maru, but she actually pauses to give you a moment you didn't ask for.

"You okay?" She asks.

"Fine," you say. It comes out gruffer than you had meant.

You should ask her the same thing. You want to ask her what happened. You want to ask her if she has someone to help out around the farm until she recovers. You hesitate too long, thinking about how it isn't your business, and about how it isn't like _you_ were going help her. She leaves with a wave that you reflexively return.

In the end, Marnie and Jas are the ones helping her. You were resentful at the idea of helping her yourself. (She didn't ask and you didn't offer. You don't know why you invent things to be angry at.) You're just as resentful that it's them. (She didn't ask. You didn't offer.)

"Good timing, in a way," Marnie tells you. "Not much gardening to be done in the winter. So we're really just helping with the animals."

"I'm going to milk the cows," Jas says, though you're sure she's going to spend the entire visit hiding shy behind Marnie's leg.

Marnie doesn't have to say anything when she gets back - you can tell she regrets offering. The new girl's farm is still small, but work is work, and Marnie has her own work to tend to, both before _and_ after. By nightfall, she is exhausted, and Jas has been asleep on the couch since they got back.

"Oh," Marnie says as she scoops Jas into her arms. "I forgot to mention it, but she sent some eggs back with us. Filled an old carton with them in the fridge."

You raise an eyebrow, unsure of why she's telling you. And of why the girl would send eggs back to the person she bought the chickens from to begin with.

You think about how tired Marnie looks, every day, for a week - and you think about offering to take her place.

But you don't do it.

You're not sure if you're angrier at yourself for not helping or for the girl for needing help to begin with.

You drink, and eat scrambled eggs that were supposed to be an omelet, and you watch tv in the living room instead of your bedroom while Marnie and Jas are out of the house. You don't know why you feel like garbage for not doing something you don't want to do - something you have no obligation to do.

But you feel like garbage most of the time, so you deal with it like you always do. Escapism and television, drowning yourself in tv shows that don't resonate with you, tv shows that inspire nothing from you and are forgotten by morning. God, if you're just going to consume, you could at least digest, you could at least _care_ , but you don't.

After a week you can see a new bounce in Jas's step when they go to help out one last time. She still comes back drowsy, but she is talkative now, familiar with the girl.

"Do you want to know a secret? She told me," Jas whispers in your ear, one night, pushed up to your side with her knees sinking into the couch cushion.

"Sure," you say, because it's a lot easier to humor Jas than other people. You've never ever been particularly good with kids, but Jas doesn't seem to know any better.

"She's in the mines to get these void thingies," Jas tells you, sounding positively conspiratorial. You can only assume this was told to her the same way, with the understanding that it would not really be kept a secret. "So she can give them to a wizard and become his apprentice."

"Oh really," you ask, playing along.

This kind of fantasy stuff is all nonsense to you, but you don't want to ruin it for a kid.

"There's a wizard in the forest," Jas says, plopping back down into her seat. She is less excitable now, and her eyes drift back to the tv. This, she says like it is no secret at all: "I've seen him a couple times."

"Have you, now?" You ask. Your voice comes out flatter than you meant, and you force a smile as if to counter balance it.

Jas isn't bothered enough to even look. "Sometimes, when I'm playing. I see the farmer, and I see the wizard."

***

Three weeks into Spring and it's done nothing but rain. Pierre is sold out of umbrellas on the one day you swing by to get one, and for some reason you don't bother trying again. You bring spare work-clothes to Joja-mart, and you start changing there in the mornings.

It's almost nice to have another hard line drawn between home and work. Your home clothes are for home, and your work clothes are at work.

Changing back into damp clothes at the end of your shift - that part isn't great.

But you can warm up by the fire in the saloon.

The new girl - three years new, to be exact - she sits with you most evenings. This development came in with the rain. You're damp from your walk to work, and she's damp from - God knows what exactly she does. You know it isn't tending to the farm, because she boasts to Leah about her new sprinklers and scarecrows and how carefully she has been managing her time.

You stand next to the fireplace, and she sits down in front of it, cross-legged on the hardwood floor. For the millionth time, mannerisms like that make you doubt she was ever a city girl, and say as much after a deep swig of cider.

She is quiet for a moment, then sets her own drink down between her legs. She looks up at you, her glasses sliding down her nose.

"It wasn't a big city or anything, but - bigger than this." She laughs, but averts her eyes, staring down at into her cup. Her shoulders droop. "It's funny, I actually always thought of it as kind of a small place. Small city, you know? Nothing to do, not like other places."

You scoff, and she looks up like she is more curious than offended. (Three years and she's learning that you're all bark and no bite - that you don't even mean to be half your bark.)

"There's more to do just about anywhere else," you tell her.

She laughs. "No, just different stuff. There's a lot to do, here. It's just stuff that doesn't occur to you when you're somewhere else. There are so many distractions and it doesn't leave you with the time. Like, I couldn't have all my animals or a farm, and I couldn't have picked up mining, sure... But I could have at least gardened if I'd really wanted to. Put planters on my apartment balcony."

You don't know how to convey that you can't even remember what you left behind. That you don't entirely know what you've gained here in the valley, either. You haven't learned a life lesson that casts light on your life before, and the dark seems the same here and there.

"I don't know," she murmurs, but you know she's going to keep talking. She takes another drink. Her cheeks are red, but you're not sure if it's from alcohol or from how close she is to the fire. "I just think about how… Before, I worked at a desk job, right? And it was an easy job, and I was good at it. I was the best. Statistically, numerically, I was _objectively_ the best in my department. And I was still completely replaceable."

You know the feeling. When she glances up to check if you're listening, you realize how silent you have been and offer a nod.

She continues. "But I didn't know what else to do with myself. I was miserable, but I didn't know what to do to _not_ be miserable, so it was like… I was willing to work towards something, but I didn't know what that something was. And I'd just - pour all this energy into stupid stuff. Mostly online. It's like a different world. It's hard to wrap my head around so many people still being so passionate somewhere that I don't even glance at, anymore."

This, you do not quite understand as well.

"It's not bad or anything, but it's like… The internet is practically another city I moved away from. And it's funny to think that it's still populated and active. It just goes on and on without me. Maybe it just feels different because it's not a physical place, but it's just so… Separate. I just don't have the energy for that sort of thing anymore, since I'm pouring all my energy into a different world."

The pit in your gut opens up with a vengeance. When you take another drink, you can feel it dropping into your hollow insides. You have nothing. This thought echoes in your head, a mantra without your consent. You don't have some rich old grandfather to gift you a plot of salvation. And sure, you have Marnie, to gift you a spare room - but the point is… The point is, maybe you don't deserve that kind of salvation, because you're just a black hole that wouldn't make proper use of it, anyway.

You don't grow anything. You just eat and drink and watch tv, and went from one dead-end job in the city to another dead end job in the valley.

Come to think of it, you haven't heard her fretting about money or failed crops in months.

She bought four sheep a couple weeks ago.

She flourishes, and the things she touches flourish. You know better than to think this is some kind of magic touch - questionable affiliation with a so-called wizard or not.

It's hard work and will-power, it's pure stubborn enthusiasm, and yours died a long time ago. You know she is only a couple of years younger than you, but you feel a thousand times older - you feel bitter at her youth.

You've been quiet for too long. She leans back and laughs, self-conscious. "It's tiring, though. Sometimes I miss just sitting on my butt all day. Or falling in love with celebrities, or - caring about something trivial so much. That sort of thing was like my identity. The things I liked were like a shorthand for who I was, to help make friends. And now I've gotta get used to my identity being in the things that I make, but also those things being impermanent. Flowers that die and food that gets eaten… I guess it would be better to say it's strange to feel like my identity doesn't have a physical manifest." Then she says, "Sorry, I keep meaning to shut up and then saying more."

"It's fine," you say, stilted and awkward, and overly aware of how little contribution you have given to what may have been a very intimate monologue.

She starts to scoot over, nearly spills her drink, then lifts it and slides to her side more carefully. She pats the floor beside her.

"Finest seat in the house," she says, waggling her eyebrows. "I'll share it with you since you listened to me ramble."

You shake your head, but feel the smile spreading on your face.

"Bah," she says, but grins back.

When you get off work the next day, she is standing under the Joja-mart shelter. She has an umbrella handle hooked around her wrist and a small basket in her hands.

She pushes off of the wall as you walk by, hopping up to step beside you and quickly opening her umbrella to hold overhead.

"What are you doing?" You ask, trying not to sound amused.

"You're always coming to the saloon without an umbrella, and I was nearby," she says. "I thought I'd share mine with you."

"Maybe I'm not going to the saloon tonight," you say, mostly just to mess with her. Of course you're going to the saloon. You're always going to the saloon.

"Then I'll walk you home. We live close. Either way is on the way." (She blinks at her own words, and laughs.)

You let her walk you to the saloon and feel good about yourself, as if having a girl share her umbrella with you can be seen as a chivalrous act.  
  
She stops outside, and you are startled that she does not seem to be coming inside tonight. She still does not come every night. (You aren't disappointed on the nights that she doesn't. Now that she sits beside you by the fire, you are getting about as much of her as you can tolerate. You tell yourself.)

You must look bewildered, because she laughs and spins her umbrella, sending droplets of rain flying. Some hit you, and this only makes her laugh harder.

"Sorry, sorry," she says, then reaches into the basket she has been carrying. She hands you a small lunch box. It's a cute, pink thing. Patterned with flowers, like her umbrella. "I made this for you," she says, shameless. "Marnie said you liked spicy stuff. I'm doing this thing right now where I just cook everything in my cook-book, one-by-one, but I can't really eat spicy stuff, so. Sorry if it's bad."  
  
Your instincts tell you to assure her it won't be bad, but you are too startled, and so you just blurt out, "This is great. Thanks."  
  
She beams, and you stand outside the saloon for a moment longer to watch her leave. You go inside, sit down in front of the fire, and eat your dinner. It isn't as spicy as you usually like, but it looks good and it tastes good, so you really can't complain.

The next day, when you get off of work, she is back, standing under the shelter and watching the rain. She walks you to the saloon, and this time sits with you in front of the fire. (You talk about video games together, and about the foods that you like. You watch her throw her head back, laughing at your stories of getting stuck in the early levels of your favorite game as a child.)

The same way that she had become regular company in the saloon, she becomes a regular sight after work. She waits for you each day, even when the rain stops. Sometimes she has gifts for you, but more often than not she just has some small talk. That's enough for you. The routine is a comfort.

For a while, it makes you hate waking up a little less. (On the flip side of this, it makes time crawl that much more with your eagerness to get off of work.)

By the end of Spring, the sun is out more regularly. She comments at least once per day that she is glad the Flower Dance won't be ruined by rain. You have never faced celebrations with the same excitement as she carries, but you are used to faking it for Jas, to an extent.  
  
You aren't faking it. You remember the past two Flower Dances so vividly. You remember the way the new girl had stood to the side, looking lonely, but smiling even so. Her first year, she had only just come to the town. She had given her shy, cursory greetings to everyone, then resigned herself to isolation. Her second year, you remember her lingering by certain people's sides a bit longer.  
  
This year, you're sure she'll be able to dance with someone. (If she doesn't ask, you're going to offer.)

Enthusiasm is so unfamiliar, by now, that you don't quite know what to do with yourself. It's almost frightening to be less miserable. You almost want to drink away a giddiness that feels too childish to be real, to be your own.

On the day of the Flower Dance, it occurs to you that it's your first time seeing her in a dress. Up until now, you've only seen her in loose T-shirts and jeans. In over-alls and shorts.  
  
She has daisies weaved into the hair-ties that hold her pigtails in. Her dress is white, and you do not know enough about fashion to describe it. But it is pretty and breezy, with a pink bow under the bust and a translucent over-skirt that bounces when she does.

She gives you a bouquet of tulips, which for a moment makes your heart skip a beat. You may have gotten more familiar with her recently, but this is still a fresh friendship, and you can't imagine someone giving _you_ of all people a bouquet. Then you realize that it is a bouquet of only tulips, not mixed flowers.

You watch her hand one out to every single person present, boasting about how many more are blooming outside her house.

It isn't an unpleasant feeling, but it is somewhat jarring. You hold the tulips and think about how you don't own a vase, then think about how you can ask Marnie for one, but it will probably mean combining the three bouquets in the household into one vase, and that doesn't sit quite right, either.

You don't get the chance to ask her to dance. She asks Elliott.

After the dance, you watch her split from him with ease. Elliott joins Leah, the two of them falling into conversation as casually as ever. Just as simply, you watch her bounce to Haley's side. Both of them laugh and giggle, pulling other girls along with them and all chattering about taking photographs.

You hear plenty of the others from town talk about an after-party of sorts at the saloon. For once, you do not feel like going.

***

Maybe you had some misconceptions about your relationship. About your friendship.

You do not think she is so insincere as to see you as just another name to check off on a list of neighbors befriended, even if she sometimes behaves that way with others. But maybe you were reading into things just a little too much. You don't question her about it.

She didn't ask (you). You didn't offer (in time).

But she is still standing outside the Joja-mart at the end of your shift, more often than not. She still gives you silly gifts, sometimes. You still get stupid impatient as you watch the clock.

You still hate being alive, but hey, having a small crush was never going to fix that.

And then the Joja-mart closes. Apparently somewhere between farming, mining, and whatever nonsense she gets up to with that alleged wizard in the forest, she had also been single-handedly fixing the old community center.

It's like night and day. For as long as you've lived here, the center has been decrepit. Falling apart, rotting, full of mildew and cracked flooring.

Then one day it's not. The holes are patched as good as new, the floors are smoothed out. The fish tank is clean and full and has a filter installed. The power is back on and the furniture is new. Just something she's been working on, she says, and whistles like she is poorly hiding a secret.

If you are being honest, the best part of all of this is watching Pierre punch your boss in the face. On some level you understand that capitalism is not solely his fault, that your miserable life and near-constant suicidal ideation is not just because of your soul-sucking job.

But a much bigger part of you thinks it still feels _real good_ to see the man who represents all these awful things to you go down in one hit. 

It's comical, really, watching such a meek little man punch _anyone_ in the face. Or maybe stupid is a better word than meek. A big corporation like that could sue him in an instant, if they wanted.

But you suppose they just wanted a hasty exit. It feels as if you were at work one day, and jobless the next. (It was not _quite_ this fast. But it was not slow, by any means.)

Marnie lowers your rent for you, which doesn't feel great, but she also looks almost _pleased_ when the topic comes up. As if she wants you to be unemployed, as if she wanted you to quit your job. She'll like it less when the bills get tighter. She'll like it less when she realizes it means having you home more and more.

She'll like it less when she realizes that fixing your circumstance won't fix you.

You can't afford to drink at the saloon quite as often anymore, not with meager unemployment checks, and your savings dwindling. You also don't like drinking at home, because that just reminds you what a disgusting freeloader you are.

So you take a six pack out to the lake, and you sit on the docks and you drink there.

Of course she shows up. Of course she does.

She sits down beside you without asking. You hand her a beer, wordlessly, and she takes it with a smile and a bow of her head that sends long hair spilling over her shoulder and down to her lap. Moonlight catches the edges of her glasses, makes her cheeks glow.

She sips in silence.

"It's late," she comments, eventually.

"Yep," you say.

You hear the shifting of the waters below, and the breeze in the grass. It is Summer now, and even in the night, the wind is warm. You love the night in this season. Compared to the city, the valley is missing any kind of night life, and you're back and forth on whether you love or hate that.

It's missing a lot of things, but an excuse to be out is the only one of them you think you care about.

She sets down her beer and lays down. You turn your head to look at her, but this angle only gives you a good look at her stomach; her T-shirt is tied in a knot beneath her bust, like its looseness had been a burden.

"The stars are so bright," she murmurs. "No light pollution out here."  
  
You tear your gaze away from her body and tip your head back to look at the sky. It's true. It's a garden of stars up there. You can see them blooming even through the passing clouds. The moon is almost full, surrounded by a vivid halo.

Somehow your beer suddenly tastes a whole lot more bitter.

You think about telling her that you are a black hole. You think about telling her that she's pretty. You think about telling her that you sort of want to die, and that you blamed your shit job for it for so long that now you don't know where to point.

You've always known this, but it's a perfect highlighter, underlining for the millionth time: it's you that's broken.

"Remember what you said before?" You ask, before you can stop yourself.  
  
This was not enough information. Her voice drifts up to you, curious. "Probably? What are you talking about?"  
  
"About being willing to work hard, but not knowing what to work hard at?"  
  
She takes a moment to respond, then says, quiet, "Yeah."

You don't elaborate. How do you tell someone that you don't know how to take joy in anything when they seem to take joy in _everything_?  
  
"You wanna dance?" She asks.  
  
You blink, unsure you heard her right. "What?"

"You wanna dance?" She repeats herself, and you wonder if she's drunk. She's only had half a beer. She adds, "Like the Flower Dance."

There's a brief flash in your gut, a churning sort of shame and disgust at yourself. You wonder how much she sees through you, and what she thinks of it. She didn't ask you, and she didn't let you ask. Does she know that you wanted to? The combination of those ideas is nauseating.

But you don't sense any ill intent in her tone. No cruel amusement. You cannot tell what she is thinking at all, but you don't think it's bad.

You still tell her, "Nah," trying to sound casual.

After a moment's hesitation, she just says, "Okay," and you can't read anything from her tone.

***

You show up to the Dance of the Moonlight Jellies late, this year. Your drinking has been getting bad again.

Without routine, your days are blurring. You wake up at - who knows? Noon, some days. Two pm, others. You keep meaning to do some chores and help Marnie out, but each time you roll up your sleeves and think of something to do, you find out Marnie has finished it just hours ago.

You don't like going to sleep because the inactivity of laying in bed means laying alone with the dark inside and out. It means being stuck with your thoughts and no distractions, and your thoughts kind of suck. So you stay up later and later and sleep in later and later, and hate yourself for it a little more each morning.

You play video games with the cheats on, and you watch tv that still means nothing to you. You drink alone in your room until you're sick, because it makes time blur, but this time it's more acute, and you're in control of it. Kind of in control of it.

You have the illusion of control over it.

That's good enough; it has to be.

The sky is clear and the moon and stars are enough to light your way. No light pollution, you think to yourself. The lanterns are already turned off. The crowd is surrounded by quiet murmurs, everyone having hushed conversations among themselves as they look out on the sea.

She is sitting between Sam and Sebastian at the edge of the docks, leaning forward and gesturing. Sebastian's eyes are trained on her more resolutely than you have ever seen him looking at anyone. Sam's whole face is scrunched up, laughing at something she's said.  
  
She huffs playfully, apparently not having intended for whatever she said to earn laughter. She turns her head away from Sam with a snap, pretending to pout. Her eyes lock with yours as you approach, and her expression changes immediately. It's as if she forgets she was sitting with anyone at all. She scrambles to her feet, only pausing briefly to offer her seat to Abigail, before rushing to greet you.  
  
"Jellies!" she says, the loudest voice on the docks. Several eyes shoot her way, some amused, others annoyed.

"Jellies," you agree.

"They're dancing," she says, almost accusatory. This close, you can see the red of her cheeks, and when you look past her to the group she'd been sitting with, you see several beer cans nearby. You don't like the way your stomach does a flip in jealousy, and you don't like that your first thought is to ask if there are any left. You haven't had anything to drink today.

"Sure are," you answer, distracted, but trying not to be.  
  
"Do you want to dance yet?" She asks.

"Don't know how," you admit. You don't think this is particularly embarrassing. Besides, when she's drunk and you're not, the tables are so turned that you think _nothing_ could be embarrassing.  
  
"Me either." Your lips quirk up. She speaks up again before you have time to make a quip. "But the jellies get called dancers and all they do is wiggle, so I think we're good. Just, like, shimmy a little."  
  
As an example, she wiggles her hips, then her arms. It is possibly the least sexy dance you have ever seen.

"I'll pass on that one," you say, thinking that maybe you'll do a jelly-wiggle for her after some prodding.

Instead, she says, "What about the flower dance? We both know that one."  
  
You can't think of a good reason to say no, and so you don't. She takes your hand when you offer it, and the two of you dance. You manage to carefully lead her back off the docks and onto the shore, just in case she is more clumsy that she seems. You hear the sand shift under her bare feet, feel it kick uncomfortably into your shoes as you spin her.

You know that others are watching, and you know that you look stupid. You know this kind of thing is charming from her, but does not suit you at all. You are not some fairy-tale prince, some charming newcomer sent to brighten people's day.

And you know that she is like this with everyone; this isn't special, isn't just for you. She is charming for Elliott, who she asked to dance with her when it counted, she is charming for Sebastian, who she lavishes with rare gifts as he blushes.

You don't like caring so much. About what other people think and about what she thinks.

But you like her hand on your shoulder, and you like when you miss-step and she kicks your calf to the side like she's trying to knock your feet back into the right steps. You like that she collapses against your chest in laughter.

***

You don't understand how some things can be so _good_ , but not be enough to keep you running smoothly.

She has a gift for you every time she sees you. Home-grown peppers, home-cooked meals. You remind yourself that she does this for everyone, and when you feel like getting out of the house and drinking at the saloon, you always see it first-hand.

You come in after her, and watch her slide a smooth aquamarine to Emily across the bar. She gives a diamond to Gus, but still pays her tab when he insists there's no need. She gives Harvey a bottle of strawberry wine.

She buys you a beer. You love beer, but this does not make you happy.

You drink it alone and watch her join Abigail on the back room couch. She gives her an amethyst and starts spinning her story about the caverns in the desert. You wonder, if you were a better man, if you would make those caverns your life.

Instead of the escapism of video games, if you could actually put your strength to use. Slay monsters, find treasure, earn some decent money. It feels like a completely different world - like a fake world, because that's all you ever see that sort of thing in. It's as good as fiction to you.

And while all this is on your mind, she offers to bring Abigail with her sometime. Because of course she does.

Abigail shakes her head, smiles, and says, "I want to start small, and I want to do it on my own. But you've given me so much courage to do it. I already bought a sword to take down to the mines."

It's just you.

For the millionth time, it's just you who can't decide what you want, who can't pursue dreams because you have none. You're hollow inside, you're empty, and there's nothing that can fill you up.

It isn't that you have a stupid crush and it isn't that you can't tell if she's _super_ into you or just _super_ into everyone. That's there, but it's a small thing, in the long-run. You've never been a romantic. You know how relationships with you play out, and it's never pretty. You're not a fix-it project for a fixer girl, because you are intrinsically broken at your core, and no amount of pretty patchwork can get to the problem.

You don't want to go home, so you drink by the cliff side. It's been a while since you sincerely entertained walking off its edge. Not a long time since the thought crossed your mind, but a long time since you really weighed the pros and cons of it.

How long can you keep doing this? Working yourself into misery spirals and drinking to uncoil the knots you've twisted? Pretending you're numbing anything when you know you're only making it worse?

You always think about how you don't grow, you don't expand, you don't create.

But the misery expands. That's all it does. And knowing your flaws without fixing them is almost _worse_.

You wish she would stop showing up like your world revolves around her. It doesn't. But here she is, like clockwork, like gravity.

She crouches beside you in silence, and you talk some absolute nonsense at her calves, because you're pretty sure you'd vomit if you tried to stand or even sit up all the way. You tell her about the black hole inside your body that ruins your whole life, and you tell her that you get closer to the edge of this cliff every day. You tell her how much you resent not having your job anymore, thanks to her. But at least you also tell her that it's not half as much as you resented the job.

She talks back, but it's a blur. You aren't angry at her, so she must not say anything wrong. But you don't feel much of anything past the deep despair that opens up like floodgates, so she must not say anything particularly _right_ , either.

You wake up in the hospital, briefly. Once to tense voices and what feels like a thousand hands getting shoved down your throat. The next time in a quiet, dark room. The moonlight through the window makes the white bedsheets glow, makes your skin look sickly pale when you look down at your shaky hands.

She is asleep in the chair beside your bed, head lolled to the side.

You go back to sleep.

In the morning you remember even less, and your whole body aches like hell.

Harvey gives you contact information for a therapist. Says he'll even help you make your first appointment, if you're overwhelmed.

(You realize that he doesn't hate his job, not like you did. He just hates not making enough money. Would better wages have made you less miserable? They would certainly help with what you're sure will be the high cost of a therapist.)

But you go to the appointment. It's an hour by bus,

You've seen plenty of therapists on tv. They nod and smile gently and ask, "How does that make you feel?"

Your therapist is a woman twice your age, with dark hair in a tight bun. And she _does_ ask you how things make you feel, but she also asks you a lot of other questions, and sometimes straight-up scolds you if you start to talk yourself in circles. You don't know exactly what to say to her, and you aren't really comfortable opening up to anyone like that, but…

You go home, and you feel sort of okay, and when your thoughts do start to spiral, you remember what it's like to have someone who is sort of on your side and maybe a little bit strict, too.

You still drink, and you still drink too much.

Baby steps, you tell yourself, the voice in your head as loud as it can get, just to drown out the rest of you that wants to talk shit about yourself, instead.

You don't leave your house so much, when you're not going to the bus stop for your therapy sessions.

You're a little afraid of going to the saloon. You haven't been - haven't seen her since the morning you spent in the hospital. She'd looked exhausted and dirt-smudged, glasses crooked and hair in disarray. She had said she was just glad you were okay.

Maybe it's just shame that makes you want to avoid her. You've heard her voice from your room, heard her order bales of hay from Marnie through the door and frozen mid-step in your room, hand on the doorknob, waiting until she left.

She barges into your room a week later, without warning. You are a little bit buzzed at four in the afternoon, sitting on the floor playing video games. All you can manage is to blink up at her for a moment, dazed.

"I need help," she blurts out, and you don't know what to make of that. _You_ need help, you think. If she needs help too then maybe she should be seeing a therapist. (The idea is laughable. Sure, she has some lonely anecdotes about the city, but she doesn't have addictions, doesn't boil over with self-hatred each night.)  
  
"Uh," you say, and sort of wish you had showered any time in the last three days.  
  
"With - farming. I hurt myself. Again."

You remain unconvinced, but don't have any real reason to argue.

"I'll pay you if you just… Help me feed my animals and… I'll teach you to make jam?"

"Are you trying to hire me?" You ask.

"I guess?"  
  
So you start on Monday.

***

Your therapist helps you to drink less. You think this is more thanks to her than anyone else, but having a new routine at the farm helps, too. You wake up early, now, which only sucked at first.

You watch the sunrise on your way up to the farm and the glitter of morning dew does something pleasant to your heart.

The new girl usually gives you breakfast before you start, which tops any other bosses you've had before. She pays you decent money, though now that you're getting a closer look at what she's made of her farm and of her home, you don't think it impacts her in the slightest.

She gathers chicken eggs while you get their food. She picks flowers while you fix her fences. You milk the cows while she sheers the sheep.

You like the sound of the sprinklers. It's a comforting white-noise.

She _does_ teach you to make jam. You don't really take it in. Mostly you just sit at her kitchen table and watch her flit around her kitchen.

Sometimes she asks you to do menial tasks, but you're pretty sure this is just to make an excuse to pay you at the end of the day. Sometimes she isn't there. Sometimes there is a note on her door that lists your tasks, and sometimes that note is blank.

This usually means that she has spent the day with someone. You're no snoop, but the saloon is more and more welcoming again, now that you have a budget, and any day you don't see her on her farm, you find her there in the evening. You hear her chat about her day to others. Sometimes she gives you gifts - trinkets she picked up while she was out with them.

You are starting to realize that she does not really know how to interact with people without these gifts. Souvenirs and trinkets and handcrafted goods. Homegrown, home-cooked meals. Store-bought from the store in the desert. It doesn't seem to matter.

It's never surprising to get a gift from her.

Not until it's a bouquet from Pierre's.

She doesn't even look embarrassed. For a moment you wonder if she just doesn't understand the significance, if no one explained these silly small-town traditions to her. But she looks at you expectantly, and you blurt out your acceptance like a giddy teenager, because all you can think of is how warm she was against your body when you danced together on the beach, in the moonlight.

 _That's_ when her face goes beet red. Like she hadn't expected you to accept it. She flusters and lets out a long, relieved sigh with a hand over her heart.

"I - like you. A lot," she says. "I wasn't sure if… Augh. Never mind! Okay! Yeah! We're dating!"

You are beginning to suspect that she is simply clumsy with other people. Like a child trying to earn their classmates' favor with gifts before they really learn how to have friends. Or like - like someone who has been watching you kill yourself slowly for a couple of years now and isn't sure if they can handle it. 

You are cautiously optimistic about this. You've been drinking less. (Your therapist says you should stop, that it's _still_ too much. But it is less than before.) You still feel intrinsically broken, you still feel like it's impossible for someone to love you, but you also feel too stupid to do the logical thing and turn her down for those reasons.

Well, you never claimed to be smart.

And she isn't smart, either, because it is _literally_ only a month later that she hands you the mermaid's pendant. Like it's nothing. The two of you are sitting at the bar in the saloon. You are drinking - just your second beer for the night. Probably your last. She is eating a plate of spaghetti, which is vaguely funny, but endearing. You don't feel bad teasing her for it, because Sam and Abigail did, too.

She laughs and offers you a bite. When you say no, she shrugs and says. "Suit yourself. Oh, but here," and sets the pendant down on the counter-top.

Gus nearly chokes on his breath. Emily trips over her own feet. They are the only two to notice, and the rest of the saloon remains abuzz with a dozen separate conversations. The world spins on around you.

"Yeah," you say. "Of course."

You don't expect her to fix you. You don't expect her to heal you.

But you like to spend time with her, and that's enough.

***

Your mind races down every conceivable path until the day of the wedding.

This is a mistake, you tell yourself, frantic and horrified. You are going to drink yourself to death on an unfamiliar floor next to a poor girl who will have to feel responsible for it. You have never had a girlfriend last longer than two years and now you're getting married after less than _one_.

You are an idiot, and the shine of this will wear off. The shine of _her_ will wear off and you'll be further back than just square one, because at least on square one you weren't shackled to someone you resent.

But you love her. You do.

The clarity of this thought makes you worry that you are a crazy person.

She is clumsy with other people's feelings, and like a child, tries to compensate for this with constant gifts. She can be so loud that it is embarrassing to be with her. When you need to be comforted, you are not sure she can speak to you how you want to be spoken to, not sure that she can say what you need to hear. It shouldn't be her responsibility to, but you will need it, even so.

But time slows down when you are with her. Moments last forever. They imprint into your body like stars bursting into existence and then they keep you light and warm when you remember them, and that has to be worth something.

You remember her with her arms crossed, resting on the bridge as she looks at the shimmering light on the river. You remember her sitting on the beach, sifting through the sand with her fingers in search of shiny pebbles. You remember her in the forest, curled up in a beam of sunlight like a cat, relaxed with a book and a packed lunch and a sword at her hip.

When you kiss, her fingers grasp the hem of your shirt. When you stay the night at her house, it feels spacious and comfortable compared to the room you rent at Marnie's.

She imprints in your mind comfortably, even when she does not make you giddy.  
  
When you work on her farm, you take in the hot sun on your back and feel pulses of satisfaction. You used to long for that feeling after weeks straight of work and still come away empty handed. With her, you feel good before noon. You feel accomplished with only one task done out of ten.

Time slows down when you are with her, and so the wait until your wedding feels longer than it is. But your wedding day comes.

Neither of you talk about how no one from your lives before the valley is coming. No old friends. Not even family.

You're never really in the mood to sour a happy topic with explaining that you are just plain naturally estranged from most of your family, or that you've never really had friends. You do talk about it, once or twice, laying in her bed in the dark.

She turns to you and murmurs, "That's okay. It's not about what life was like before. It's okay to have fresh starts, and it's okay to be happy about them whenever they started."

You stare, trying to make out her face in the shadows. You don't want to tell her how off-base she is with what she's read into it. You don't blame her - you're still working on being able to tell her the way you think. There's a balance you know you need to hit between the nothing you give everyone else and the everything you give your therapist.

You settle on saying, "I know," and shrugging.

"I'm not inviting anyone, either," she admits, and you can tell from her tone that she does not want you to ask questions about this.

But the rest of the conversations about it are more upbeat. Both of you agree that you don't like anything flashy or fancy. All that would do is make you feel anxious over something that is supposed to be a celebration of how natural it feels to be together.

On the day of your wedding, she wears white.

A simple sun-dress, more plain than even her Flower Dance dress. It is breezy and light, with buttons down its front. You aren't exactly dressed up, either. It's perfect. It's comfortable. Her hair is done up nice. You don't know the words for it. Her bangs are swept from her face in a braid. The rest of her long hair is in low, loose pigtails. This time the flowers are not in her hair, but on her long, lacy veil.

"Cute, right?" She asks, holding its ends and twisting them in the air like she is holding ball-gown skirts. It doesn't match the informality of the rest of the wedding, but you can see how happy she is to play with it, to let it flutter in the wind and to twist her fingers up in it. So you smile and you nod, and a part of you is startled that she stares up at you and blushes.

It occurs to you that this is mostly because you still just don't believe she could love someone like you. When you catch her gaze lingering on you, when you manage to fluster her - it's always surprising. As if it's a given that you love her, but just as much of a given that you are just a name on a checklist for her.

You say your vows. They are nothing poetic, nothing amazing.

She drops her veil down over her shoulders like a shawl. You rest your hands on her shoulders, over the lace, and feel it under your fingers. You kiss your wife on a Summer day. You kiss her, and you kiss her, and you kiss her again until her glasses slide down her nose and bump into you, until the audience is laughing and cheering at once. 

It's the whole town watching fondly, and you know them all by name.

You never thought they cared much for you. But today you think - it's not that it doesn't matter whether they do or don't. It's that you think they do.

The satisfaction carries you for weeks.

***

Moving things into her home is easier than expected. As in: ridiculously easy. And - it's not like you owned a lot of stuff. Your whole life fit into one small room at Marnie's.

It's just that you move a couple things, and then she decides to play up the nagging wife role. She puts her hands on her hips and with a dramatic feigned sigh, gestures to the wall. "We're going to need a big calendar, now that we have two schedules to be coordinating. We're going to need one _right now this very instant_. Go buy one?"

You're still riding high on the whole _wedding_ thing, so you laugh and do what she says. It's silly, it's unnecessary, but it made her laugh and dance around you in the room, bare feet on the wood floors. And the weather is nice. (Besides, you know what it's like to be too caught up in one petty detail to do anything that matters. This happens to you often, and maybe it happens to her, too.)

When you come back, everything you own is in her - your - house. In as much time as it took you to walk to Robin's shop and back, apparently your wife moved a TV, a couch, a dresser, all your clothes, and more.

You get that farming is hard work, that she's not as delicate and petite as she looks, but that's still a stretch.

"Secret helpers," she explains, helping you rearrange it all into a fashion that you like.

"We're, uh… Married, now, so I think that kind of secrecy will have to go." You're only half joking.

She seems to consider this. She is strangely still as you move furniture around her, but you allow her the time to think. Eventually she says, "It's the junimos."  
  
"The whats."  
  
She comes to help you rotate the sofa you are struggling with alone. Holding one end of it up, she meets your eyes across its length. "You know, the uh… The arcade game? With the lil' cart?"

You know that she repaired the carts in town, but you also know their paths wouldn't have helped with this sort of a move. It's as good as a nonsequiter.

With the sofa in the right spot, you nod, and the two of you lower it back down gently.

"The lil' dudes," she asserts. "In the carts, in the game. Do you not have the key? I'll give you the key. The - you probably can't see them? A lot of people can't see them."

You swallow, and try to sound grave in the face of her bad joke. "Should _you_ be going to therapy?"

Her gaze darts away, which startles you. The unreadable expression on her face is fleeting, and then she is beaming at you again as she says, "Oh, probably!"  
  
You try to forget this moment.

You go to the saloon in the evening, when the house is as perfect as it's going to get. Your wife is still working - she has a fresh harvest that she wants to put into storage while she decides what, exactly, to make with it, but assures you she'll join you later. You take each drink and think it'll be your last, that you'll quit as soon as she shows up.

She doesn't, and when you get home she's asleep, sitting up on the couch, with a small pile of strawberries in her lap. They've stained her shorts.

It strikes you just how stupid it is to marry someone so soon. Your gaze darts over to the bed - the one bed.

You've slept with girls on the first date, but it took you two weeks to kiss her. Your cheeks feel hot. It's the alcohol flush, you tell yourself, because you're not a fucking teenager who can't say sex. (No. You're just an idiot who marries a girl he's hardly touched.)

You brush her hair from her face, and this wakes her up with a start. She blinks at you for a moment, then when comprehension washes over her, presses her cheek against your palm. She tilts her head up for you, eyes closing. You lean in to kiss her.

Then she jolts forward, knocking her forehead into yours and crying: "My shorts!" Followed quickly by an "ow," as she scoops up the berries from her lap and drops them onto a napkin on the end-table.

She stands up and brushes past you, unbuttoning her shorts as she goes. She kicks up one leg, then the other, slipping them off and then holding them under cold water in the kitchen sink.

You aren't sure what to do with this, except to appreciate the curve of her spine, of her hips, of her calves. The way her tank-top has ridden up. Her long hair is in a loose ponytail, made looser by sleep, and it's your first time seeing it so messy. Twisted strands spill over her bare shoulders and tuck in and out of her spaghetti straps.

Her panties are blue. They have cartoon characters you don't recognize on the butt, and you snort a laugh. It occurs to you that in the past you would have been bitter she didn't show up. You would have been deep in rumination on how childish she is to wear those underwear.

"I'm sorry," she tells you, as you follow her path to the kitchen. "I was going to go out with you tonight but I got distracted and…"  
  
You wrap your arms around her, resting your head over her shoulder. The weight of her body settles against you naturally as she leans back into you, trailing off. She turns off the water, and for a moment you both just linger there. She is warm, and you are just a little bit dizzy. (If you ever quit drinking, you are going to miss having alcohol as an excuse for everything.)

When you kiss her neck, she shivers. Her hands come to rest over yours - you feel the cold bump of her wedding ring.

She holds your hand and leads you to the bed. In the dark, you lay beside each other, fingers still laced between your bodies, and God, being an over-eager teenager was better than overthinking things like this. You kind of want your first time to be sober. (At the very least, it is reassuring that this doesn't sound impossible.)

She scoots closer and holds her body against yours. Heat radiates off of her and into you, and when she kisses you it is only hesitant for a moment. Then more insistent, until she is pushing against you so hard that you have to push back. You squeeze her hips tight as you part your lips for her tongue - you like the way her breath hits your face in puffs when you have to separate for air.

Then she yawns.

The laugh spills out of you uncontrollably - your own snort startles you.

You roll over to lay on your back, but turn your head to look at her. You reach out and touch her hip with your knuckles.

"Do you want to just go to sleep?" You ask her.

She opens her mouth to answer but yawns again. She looks resigned as she nods and murmurs "I do."

"That's - fine," you say, trying not to sound stilted and awkward and like you just had her tongue down your throat.

"Can we still snuggle?" She asks.

You raise your arm up, and she curls up against your side. She is asleep within seconds.

And sure, it's difficult to get to sleep when you're still half hard, but you aren't annoyed at something that you know would have irritated you before.

***

Your _actual_ first time together is great, for the record. It's hardly a day later. She is a bit shyer than you had expected, for a girl who ties her T-shirts under her bust in the day and strips to her underwear in front of you without a thought. You don't know what she has to be insecure about, and when you ask, trying not to sound annoyed, she cannot explain herself.

You've never had a girl fawn over your body so much. You know you are out of shape, so it's baffling how pleased she seems to run her hands over your stomach and chest.

You're married, which is stupid and ridiculous in itself, but you still can't wrap your head around her loving you. Actually, _actually_ being in love with you. But she is, and she murmurs it between kisses all night.

So sure, it's a little awkward and a little fumbled. But it's great.

***

  
  
You had thought the "junimos" were just a one-off. A quirk or a joke that didn't quite land. You'd thought she wouldn't bring them up again. Kind of like the wizard in the forest that you feel as if each person in town has mentioned only once or twice since you moved here. He's an urban legend, you figure. There are monsters in the sewer and dwarves in the caverns, and everyone says these silly things like they are local trivia, so sure. Why not a wizard in the woods, too?

The junimos seem like the kind of throw-away thing she teases you with when she is unwilling to share a secret with you.

Except - then you meet the wizard.

The morning starts out like any other. Your wife mumbles incoherently and sleeps in past you - for all of ten minutes. Then she's up, finished dressing before you and making you coffee. Reheating one of the pre-made frozen meals she stock-piles and counting out the chores for the day on her fingers.

You're in charge of feeding the sheep and chickens, and gathering the eggs. She feeds and milks the cows. "For today," she tells you, "that's it, I think? I mean, I've got stuff to do, but. That's me-stuff. You're good." She doesn't explain where she's going, after that.

You do not consider yourself a jealous or suspicious man. Or at least, you know better than to lean into it. (She spends a lot of time with other men, you are acutely aware. She treats them the same way she treated you.)

When she leaves, you sit on the porch with a beer and read a book from her shelves. It's good to share interests sometimes. (You especially like when this means having her sprawled out over your lap, watching you play video games, but suppose you should reciprocate, sometimes, and indulge in her hobbies.)

She comes back sooner than you expected. She is wearing overalls and boots - her hair is up in a tight bun. She looks so normal for being such a weirdo, you muse, with no small amount of fondness.

Except for the unnatural pink of her hair. But, well, even some of the housewives in the valley dye their hair. It's too small a community to fret over the social norms of businesses in the big city. Everyone knows that Caroline and Abigail are sweet, law-abiding women, whether their hair is vivid or not.

You wonder why you never thought more about this. It was one thing to never see your wife's roots grow out dark, or to see the shades of her dye falter when you only saw her in public. But now you share a home. You have not seen a single bottle of hair dye, and it has been months.

Maybe she is just discreet.

You never questioned her bubblegum pink hair, but the wizard has your attention from the first moment you see him.

He is conspicuous, beside her. In black robes and a wide-brimmed, pointed hat; his scepter holds a large crystal atop it, and he uses it like a walking stick as he follows the paved paths beside the crops.

Your wife waves to you, but turns away as soon as you raise your hand in greeting. Curious, you watch her lead him around the farm. You aren't sure what she's showing him; no crops are coming in that are worth showing off. Some of the areas she shows him are empty, and she twirls around them with her arms thrown wide, gesturing wildly.

The wizard smiles at her, and nods, and sometimes points with his scepter.

You don't like the way other people smile at her. You understand it. But you don't like it. (You tell yourself not to be stupid. He looks twice her age, _at least_.)

She leads him over to introduce to you, but then leaves the two of you alone, rushing inside to "play hostess and make lunch for everyone!"

You look at the wizard. (His clothes look much too hot in the sun.)

He looks at you. (You are drinking at eleven in the morning and reading a romance novel.)

"I'm sure you'll be happy - with less work to do," the wizard says.

You give a slow shrug, unsure of what he's talking about. But your wife brought him here in broad daylight and left you alone with him, so you can only assume nothing is meant to be a secret from you.

He comes to the same conclusion, and explains: "We're making homes for the junimos. Now that so many people are using the community center, they've got nowhere secluded to stay."

"Junimos," you repeat blankly, and take a long sip of your beer.

The wizard seems unbothered by your skepticism. (You imagine he must have thick skin, to walk around dressed like that.) He says, "I'm sure her magic will rub off on you soon. Then you'll be able to see them."

Again, all you can do is repeat him. "Magic."

"She would make a fine protégé," he muses, as if you are prompting him. Maybe it's his silly outfit or maybe it's your therapy, but you think this is vaguely hilarious instead of annoying. "If she would focus on magic, instead of this farm."

"Not a chance," you say. As you hear yourself, it occurs to you that you still don't quite know what she cares about, here. Why she does what she does and what it means to her. Maybe she would give it up. You don't know what glows in other people's hearts, not even hers. Maybe it's magic, and not the bloom of flowers.

The wizard smiles, but the brim of his hat casts shadows over his eyes, and you feel like that may be on purpose.

"Wanna show me a magic trick?" You ask, just to change the subject.

He sits down beside you, and mulls this over. "Alright," he says. He takes off his hat, and flips it over in front of him. "My wife taught me this."

Your curiosity almost overtakes your relief. (Almost.)

His grip around his scepter shifts, and he tilts his wrist only slightly. Your eyes are drawn to the glow of the crystal, then back to the hole of his hat that glows next. Like it has a small candle inside.

A dove bursts from inside, and just as quickly flies away with a frenzied flutter. Your shoulders jump, and you squint in the sunlight to watch it disappear into the sky.

"Well," the wizard amends, "ex-wife."  
  
You aren't sure what to say to that. You like to think of marriage as forever, as childish as that is. The longer you linger on that, the more impossible it sounds. Especially knowing how fast you rushed into this.

The panic slips away when you see her, though.

Your wife makes a vegetable medley, with all home-grown veggies, and the three of you sit on the porch at eat together. You are far from being close with the wizard, but this feels like another rag-tag bunch. You and the wizard are _her_ rag-tag bunch. You listen to them chatter leisurely about the junimos.

It mostly goes over your head. It's strange to look so casually into someone else's world. Instead of gossiping about neighbors, the two of them talk about dwarves and shadows. Oddly, the content of their gossip does not seem so different. It's all inane commentary on what they like and don't like, and the petty fights the two apparently have.

You feel fine until evening.

But by evening you've been drinking all day, and your mind won't let go of two things. The first: you don't know about your own wife's world. The second: marriage is not, necessarily, forever.

You have known people to skirt away from you when you drink too much. It takes a lot for your mood to sour enough for anyone to _notice_ , but when they do, they steer clear. Your wife, though, is an idiot. She is flitting around the whole house like she can't sit still for ten seconds, which annoys you.

You don't know why. You usually find it charming, these days.

She is bundling flowers into pretty bouquets one moment, then organizing the fridge the next. She makes the bed, she flips through the calendar, she tidies up your space, then her own. You are irritated that she touches your things, then irritated at yourself for caring.

Most of all, you are irritated by the way she passes by where you're sitting on the couch over and over. Like a fly that won't land.

"I think he cheated on her?" She is saying, sliding a coaster under your drink.

You scowl at her, because you don't need this kind of mothering, and who cares if there are stains on an end-table? You wonder how long she has been talking to you. You don't understand why she won't leave you alone - you're used to being alone, to having your own room, your own space, even if it felt like you were intruding in someone else's home even then.

You're in a poor mood, and you don't know how to say it; you want her to just _know_.

She adds: "Guess he got bored."

"That justify it?" You ask.  
  
She laughs. "Of course not. But, I don't know. He's got magic and junimos and alchemy. When you're having adventures, it's like… How _can_ you stay settled with just one person?"

*** 

Your wife spends a lot of time with other men. You try not to be jealous. You know how she's always been, how she's been since the day she moved out to the valley.

Maybe you're just hyper aware of it. She has more free time, lately.

And you know why. You can _see_ them, now. The junimos, bouncing around the farm, picking berries and crops. You expect them to scurry when you come close, but instead they just chirp and beep at your feet. They look like little rainbow flans.

Sometimes you see them in town, though not often.

You borrow your wife's key and you play the stupid arcade game in the saloon, and you wonder who knew about them, before. Someone must have, to make this game. Maybe they show themselves to the creative types, the productive types. The types who can build a farm from ruins or code a game from scratch.

It is strange that a town like this could have secrets. There are so many stories about _a small town with a secret_ , but it had never felt like that here. Maybe not everything was public information, but it's not exactly deep and mystical that your aunt is sleeping with the mayor. It's hardly even scandalous.  
  
(Except maybe that he won't commit himself to her. That he strings her along like a jerk. But you suppose that being a bit of a morally underwhelming lover doesn't negate being good at what you do. And what he does is keep a poor town running smooth, even when a big business can be pushed out by _one_ farmer.)

You look up the company that made the game on your phone and all you find is Mystery, capital M.

Someone knew a secret, and they put it in plain sight, just under a lock. Where did your wife even _get_ the key?

Not that it matters. It probably just fell into her lap. She never had to follow bread-crumbs to adventure, she just inherited it. (It's more proof that you're broken, that the black hole inside you is throwing off your gravitational pull. Other people find things, learn things, do things. They deserve things, and so they attract things, and you don't. You aren’t sure you have any right to be angry at the universe for recognizing your failings this way.)

You'll talk shit about the mayor being a jerk to Marnie, but here you are, resentful and bitter at your own wife for a gift that she was happy to share with you.

You want to order a drink. You want to order ten drinks.

But you play one more round of the junimo cart game, you think of how sure you are that by now your wife is at home, hard at work or making dinner, or maybe even napping on the couch. And you love her, so you give the machine a half-hearted kick, and go home.

At a point, you have to make decisions like this. It's hard, and your gut sinks with how much you want to drink and ruminate in bitterness.

Instead, you choose. You choose, as hard as you can, to think of how pretty your wife looks when her hair is like a waterfall over her shoulders. Or how admirable she is for working so hard, when she is _not_ pretty - when she is dirt-smudged and sweaty and smelly.

Tonight, she is the former. Her hair isn't frizzed from the heat. It is in silky, thick braids, draped over her the way she drapes over the arm-rest. She is wearing a nice dress, clean, but her finger tips are black. For a moment you think of ash and coal from the mines, but you know that those ventures end with dark stains on her cheeks and bandages on her arms and legs.

It's ink.

Then today she was with Elliott.

You sit down beside her on the couch, and she rises up from the arm rest to lean into you. She rests her head on your shoulder.

"Apparently his editor is on vacation, but he really wanted some feedback and proof-reading," she explains, when you ask her where she's been, with suspicion like a lump in your throat. "It was actually _super_ fun!"

You're supposed to trust your wife. You shouldn't get married to someone you don't trust. That mistake falls on your own shoulders, you think, trying to overpower the tension in your gut with anger at yourself. You can't tell if you are hot from your mood or because her body against you is so warm.

You are quiet too long. She smiles at you, soft and patient, and her enthusiasm dulls to an ember. Not with disappointment, but with care, she quiets to suit your mood. She adds, "He said I gave him some good ideas about structure."

"You a writer?" You ask her, because it feels as if she dips her toes in everything. She is a gardener, a farmer, a cook. An adventurer, and a magician's apprentice.

So, sure. Why not a writer, too?

She laughs. "No, I've never had any talent for that kind of thing."

A bitter part of you thinks that she could pick it up in an instant. She didn't have a natural talent for anything she does - she just _got_ good at them with practice and determination. You know her well enough now to see the hard work that goes into it.

She isn't like other people. She doesn't fear failure and doesn't feel much shame when she makes mistakes. It's admirable. She just moves on.

To fail is human, but the wholehearted acceptance of this is nearly inhuman for how unachievable it seems.

She rubs her cheek into your arm. "I'm not great with words, and I'm not sure I have any good stories to tell, anyway. Like, even the stuff I think I've done that's interesting… I don't think I know how to express it well enough. But it was fun to talk about writing. It's cool to listen to someone talk about what they're passionate about."

She says it thoughtlessly, but a part of you is struck by a pang of jealousy. You wonder if she is even aware of how empty you are. How passionless. You wonder if she sits when you are quiet and wishes that you could carry a conversation.

"Huh," you say.

Muted, still, quieted for the sake of your piss-poor mood, she murmurs, "I've got plenty of other stuff going on, I don't need any new hobbies."

You remember her words from before.

_When you're having adventures, it's like… How can you stay settled with just one person?_

You tell yourself you're being ridiculous.

"What'd you do today?" She asks, and pointedly bumps your shoulder with hers.

You don't know how to answer that. You worked in the morning and then wasted away the evening. So all you say is, "Not much," with a shrug that jostles her against you.

Her eyes drift away, and you second-guess your reading of all her care and patience with you. She looks disappointed.

***

You are bored. You are bored all the time, and the days drag on slower and slower without alcohol to blur the time.

You do farm work, but less, these days. Your wife's gardens don't need nearly as much work as they used to. She has a tractor, scarecrows, expensive sprinklers, and _fairies_ , so helping out with any of the vegetables and flowers seems pointless. The junimos pluck out small weeds and gather crops, happily chirping all the while.

Sometimes watching them makes you happy, but only until you remember how bored you are.

Even the animals don't seem to need much from you. You visit them to socialize them more than to groom them or feed them - all of that always seems done by the time you get up in the morning. Some tasks are done by technology, others by magic.

Your wife likes to sit in the sun and read, or spend her days with others. She likes to practice magic in the gardens.

Her presence eats away at you. You feel anxious about your own inactivity, about your own idleness.

Her absence eats away at you, too. You feel alone again, unsure of where she is or what she's doing.

Rarely with suspicion. You aren't insecure enough to think that all her friendships have suddenly turned romantic, and you aren't _quite_ enough of an asshole to assume that she's the type who would cheat to begin with.

But sometimes you think about what she said about boredom. And you think about how bored _you_ are, and how negative and moody. You think about how she seeks out others to enjoy their hobbies with them, and you think about how you're in therapy, and that's cool, but you still don't have any hobbies of your own.

***

She asks you, sometimes, what you did today.

You don't like the way you snap at her, and you don't like the way she winces.

You don't like how quiet she gets, afterwards.

You don't like how she stops asking.

***

Things aren't always bad.

There are still mornings when you trail after her and listen to her ramble, and find it just as charming as ever. Still days when you sit down beside her by the river and watch her struggle with the fishing pole, and enjoy the sun. Still evenings when the two of you cook together, both bustling around the kitchen, talking so much that it baffles you.

How can you still have things to say to each other? When you live together, when you never do anything new with your free time?

How is it that there are still times when you have so much to say?

How is it that she listens with enthusiasm?

How is it that these moments aren't enough?

***

There is a breaking point.

Of _course_ there is a breaking point. You've been predicting every breaking point in your life from the moment you were born. (With only shaky accuracy at best, but that isn't the point. The point is, self-loathing is self-fulfilling, but getting off these rails still feels like it would be a train-wreck.)

The day starts off well enough. You are babysitting Jas, just to give Marnie a well-deserved day off. She plays in the flowers, and you like watching the junimos scurry at her feet, chirping in a game they are playing with and without her.

You tell her about them, but she huffs and scolds you for trying to play pranks.

"But you believe in the wizard in the forest?" You ask.

"Yeah, because I've _seen_ the wizard in the forest. I've seen the witch, too."

You laugh and shake your head, and she gives you a shove before returning to the flowers.

Your wife makes lunch, and the three of you eat out by her grandfather's grave, where she has planted a small orchard of fruit trees. You have fresh-picked peaches for dessert, and by the end of the day you are carrying Jas home on your back. Her arms are slung around you, but you have to lean forward to keep her steady. She is not asleep, but you would hesitate to say she is still awake.

Your wife looks up at the stars and says, "I'd never really thought about it before until recently, but the valley seems like such a good place to raise kids."

You don't know why you snort. You understand why she'd say so.

She means: The stars are so bright. There's no light pollution out here. She means: there is a community here, and it is small, but it is connected. She means: we've kept away the big corporations to make the valley better for families. She means: Jas is growing up well, and she means: ' _I want kids, someday. Do you?_ '

"It's a dead-end," you tell her. "So few people live out here that the most job security it gives is the idea that you could inherit something from your parents. But it's not like every kid will love what their parents love."

She looks blindsided by the negativity, which at this point is baffling.

"I mean… Kids could still move away when they grow up. It's not like they have to stay where they're raised."

"I guess," You say. "But small towns can be hard to escape. Not a lot of opportunity for kids that are homeschooled by a lady who lives in her mom's trailer."

She shakes her head. "Easier to network and find local opportunities - and that makes applying for jobs outside of the valley easier. If that's even what they want."

"You think anyone is here because they want to be?" You know that you are only talking about yourself, and you know that you are not subtle.

Your wife winces. "I am."

You have the grace to try to backtrack, at least a little bit. "World sucks," you tell her, but you know it doesn't come out nearly as lighthearted as you want it to. "Sucks in the valley, sucks everywhere else."

You suppose there is no lighthearted way to mean: ' _I am too self-centered to think about children, I am still too much of a mess to entertain the idea._ ' 

The two of you are quiet as you duck into Marnie's place and tuck Jas in to bed.

You are quiet for most of the walk home.

"It was just a thought," she eventually says, finally sounding properly defensive. "I just thought - we both found our own happiness after coming here, so…"

You bark out a laugh. "Do I seem happy to you?"

The way she watches you, silent, makes it obvious that this question doesn't surprise her.

Your mind scrolls through endless reiterations of how stupid you were to marry so fast, to think that therapy was going to fix you. You are a black hole because you are an imploding star. Any fragment of happiness you find isn't enough, and in the end, you destroy it yourself. You can't create, not even this.

In the morning she makes you breakfast, but it doesn't make you forget that she slept on the couch.

***

She is gone more often than not.

She used to tell you where she had been when she returns. Whether it was dungeons and dragons or mining or wood-carving or berry-picking.

She comes home, and she is tentative smiles and casual conversation, but she does not tell you where she has been, and you cannot figure it out.

***

The craziest part is that you still don't feel suspicious.

Your wife vanishes for the entire day, and often. She does not offer an explanation, and you decide not to ask. (This is a stupid decision. You are more and more offended each word out of her mouth that is not an answer to a question you have not asked.)

You feel crazy, not for doubting her, but for _not_ doubting her.

You feel crazier when you wake up to breakfast in bed. A disgustingly delicious chili-cheese omelet that makes you wonder if you've forgotten about your own birthday or something.

Your wife just kisses you and steals a bite and says, "I love you, and I want to spoil you sometimes, that's all." Then rolls her eyes and lets out a playful: "Jeeeeez."

She does the dishes while you eat; she hates to leave a mess for later.

You watch her humming, despite the tension in her shoulders. You look down at your breakfast that you don't deserve.

You feel like a crazy person, but you figure if you're back into self-sabotage, you may as well go all the way and satiate your curiosity. You may as well self-destruct the only things you love, like you're retaliating against their own foolishness for accepting you.

You follow your wife in secret.

You're not sure what you expect. The magic lessons from a wizard are no secret, the neighbors are no secret. So what secret could she have?

Not a wizard, but a witch.

The amount of money your wife gives her is obscene, but these days not unbelievable. Sometimes you forget about money. It's a feeling that churns your stomach with disgust at yourself. Call it machismo brainwashing, but it feels bad not to contribute, not to be needed.

It feels bad to feel like you're just taking advantage of your wife's success, reaping the benefits of her hard work. You remember choosing between bills, you remember giving yourself hours-long pep talks just to keep yourself going to work, just to have enough to get to choose _some_ bills to pay.

How was money such a huge part of your misery, but having plenty of it now hasn't alleviated it?

You can't hear what they say, but you can read your wife's face, even from a distance. She looks like she might cry. Like she is holding back.

But she follows the witch into a cave.

And so do you.

***

You see their shadows in the dark, just their silhouettes.

Fire on the walls, and

A statue

and

***

Your head feels fuzzy, like an old television. Not with static, not with white-noise speckles devouring your thoughts. But like there's just one wire loose. Like the colors and the outlines are just out of sync, like everything is blurred, dragged behind itself just an inch, just a minute.

Your wife whirls to look at you. Her face is lit by candlelight, painted orange with dark shadows, her wide eyes flickering like the flame is inside them. She looks horrified to see you, and you can't quite - you don't understand why.

She is always excited to see you, waiting outside the Joja-mart when you get off work, with an umbrella hooked around her wrist.

No. At home? On the sofa, dozing after a long day's work.

Or…

Your body feels heavy.

"Second guessing yourself?"

It isn't your wife's voice - it's a witch. Comically typical. A storybook come to life. Skin as green as the murky swamp water around them and wearing black robes and a pointed hat. She stands back in the shadows.

Your wife does not even look back to her, as if the sight of you has turned her to stone. She just stares at you like she is terrified. You've seen her like this once before, but the memory is a blur on the cliff-side, in the moonlight. Hazy, out of reach. You try to grasp for it, the same way you are trying to grasp at anything.

"No," the farmer says, her voice trembling. "I can't - he's not happy. I can't _make_ him happy."

She is looking at you, but she is not talking to you.

You remember the way she hollered across the saloon at the other kids. You remember alcohol flush and fireplace warmth and - you remember blushing. You remember feeling warm inside at the sight of her, you remember wet hair and droplets sliding down the nape of her neck. You remember her standing in the kitchen in her underwear, washing berry-juice stains from her shorts.

"You don't have to," you interject, against your mind that screams at you as if you are an intruder. Walls are thrown up inside your head, like you have no right to talk to this girl. Pushing past that fog only tires you out more. You have to grind out the words. "It's not your job to make me happy."

She is trembling; you don't want her to.

You don't understand. You are worried, and you are angry, but most of all you are just _confused_.

She doesn't even answer you. She turns back on the witch with fists clenched tight at her side. "Is he okay?" She demands furiously.

The witch in the shadows says, blithely, "Five more minutes and it'll all be gone. His memories are being sealed away."

You are on your knees. You do not know when you fell; you did not feel the impact. You are nauseous and the walls of the cave are pulsating like - like a dungeon on the inside of a monster, like the whole screen when your health is low. Like the video games you play to pass the time after work, before work, in the devastatingly finite time between every day at _work_.

The new girl is at your side, suddenly, dropped down to her knees in front of you. She is holding you, her hands touching your shoulders gingerly, like she thinks you will break. You feel like you might.

"It's not too late to change your mind," the witch says. She sounds bored. She sounds like it is inevitable that she is going to change her mind, and you can only pray that she's right. You don't know why. You can't remember.

It feels like there is a black hole inside your body, consuming your thoughts as you think them, consuming your memories as you remember them.

"You'll be alright," the new girl assures you. She doesn't sound like she believes it. You try to focus on her face, on her big round glasses. "You're just going to forget, everyone is just going to forget. Then it's like - no harm done!"

She sounds desperate to believe it.

She says something else; the witch does too. You feel warm hands on your face, and then

***

  
you wake up.

Your head is pounding, but that's no surprise when you look around your small room at Marnie's and see the empty beer cans. You've been trying not to go overboard like this; a bitter regret swirls around in your lungs and it hurts you to breath. It feels like you're heaving the air from your lungs as you stand up.

You're startled by how early it is. Not even noon. (Early to you.)

When you leave your room, Marnie is at her counter, talking with the mayor in hushed voices. You usually give them space in these moments - not for his sake, but for hers. Today your head is pounding and you just don't have the thought to spare. You pad past them and all three of you pretend there is no awkward hush.

There are dishes in the sink.

There are dishes in the sink, and you hear your therapist's voice saying that "Starting is the hardest part. Just start. You don't even have to finish - just start."

How long ago was your last appointment? Can you even still afford them, unemployed like this? You wash the dishes and you wonder why these questions come into your mind at all, why the answers are not simply things you know. Have you become so forgetful?

Your therapist has said that drinking so much is bound to affect your brain, so you chalk it up to this. She's right after all. About this, and about starting. Once you are scrubbing at pots and pans, there's no reason to stop, no impulse to just walk away from the task before it's done.

You imagine that it would be hard to walk away from something in the middle, like that.

***

You get worse before you get better. You drink too much again, and you don't help out even when Marnie asks, and Jas doesn't want to spend time with you.

It takes time, but eventually you do something you never would have, before.

You talk to Marnie about it. You don't even mean to. You aren't even drunk.

You're sitting at the kitchen table nursing a hangover and staring down at the scrambled eggs that were very nearly a successful omelet, and over your shoulder you hear Marnie ask, gently, "Would you mind doing the dishes, today?"

Her tone says she already knows you won't, but there's a patience to it that cuts to the bone.

"I'll try," you say, not like a concession, but an admission.

A moment passes while you stare at your food without eating. Marnie sits down across the table from you, and she does not ask if you are alright.

"I think I need to go back to therapy," you say, eventually.

Marnie nods. You imagine she doesn't want to agree too enthusiastically, out of good manners. She is watching you so delicately; not like you are, but like she is. This is what you do to people. Wear them down.

"I don't know how to be a person," you tell her. "I don't know how to find what I'm supposed do, and I don't know how to be happy when I'm not doing something."

The strange thing is, you sort of know what your therapist would say to this. You can imagine her saying that you shouldn't claim you can't find what you never try to search for. She would tell you that you need to put an effort in, even if it's difficult. Try new things if nothing you're doing now is satisfying.

Something like that.

What Marnie manages is a soft, uncomfortable, "You'll find it. Until you do, you can just… Focus on what's in front of you."

And maybe that's just as valuable.

"Sorry that I'm a fuck up," you mutter. "Sorry for freeloading and not pulling my weight and not just getting a shitty job and putting up with it like everyone else in the world knows how to do." She opens her mouth, but you cut her off, because you don't want her to have to apologize or tell you that it's alright when it's not. "I'm just - sorry."

But apologies are useless if you don't try to make the change.

***

You force yourself to get in the habit of clearing out the empty cans from your room, after that. It's embarrassing how often you have to bully yourself into it. It's embarrassing how many excuses the voice in your head will make to _not_ do it.

But you have to start somewhere, and it gets easier. In time, you're taking them out of your room faster than you're replacing them.

Marnie sends you out into town for grass seeds from Pierre's.

You kind of feel like shit, but that's the default, isn't it? So you shove your hands in your pockets and get walking. (The feeling fades with each friendly smile and wave you get, although there is still a piece of you, deep in your heart, at your core, that does not understand their patience. Haven't you snapped at each of these people too many times to deserve this? Don't they know you're a deadbeat?)

The new girl is picking apples. You don't remember this apple tree being here, down the block from Pierre's, but there it is, and there she is. High up in its branches, straddling a sturdy one with a basket hooked on her arm. You stare up at her and try to remember how long this tree has been here, and think about how funny the mental image is of this girl climbing up there in the first place.

You see her body go tense before she turns her head to look at you, as if just a glimpse had been enough to set her on edge.

"Oh hey," the new girl says. Her expression is unreadable.

You wonder if you can really call her the new girl when she's been here for so long, now.

You almost grin. It's a strange sensation in your cheeks, halted by something you don't understand. You just stare up at her, and you think about how she's had everything handed to her. Can you really be jealous when you know you wouldn't make the most of it, like she does?

You're an adult, anyway. Should you really be waiting for anything heaven-sent?

You almost don't catch the apple that she tosses down to you. "They're sour," she warns you. "Don't eat it."

You raise an eyebrow and feel that tug at your lips again. You fight it again. Maybe you over-correct. Your voice comes out harsher than you meant. "What am I supposed to do with it, then?"

She looks away, back to stretching her arms out for apples just out of reach. "I don't know. Make jam."

She sounds tired. You want to ask if she's okay, but you don't know her. So you don't.

You head home and you set the apple on Marnie's counter.

You think all evening about the new girl. It makes you bitter, it makes you _angry_ , just thinking about how she inherited something so fantastical. Sure, the farm wasn't thriving when she got it, but that's _land_ , that was a man's life work. Just handed to her because a normal life was boring.

(How do you even know this? You must have heard her talk about it in the saloon.)

Not that you don't appreciate your little room at Marnie's, but how is the world _like_ that for some people? Just inheriting their escapism? Even inheriting a blank page to write on is better than other people get, and the unfairness of it feels like needles in your skin.

It makes you feel better to tend to Marnie's chickens, though. So - there's that.

***

It always makes you feel better to tend to Marnie's chickens. (No, that's not true, nothing is ever _always_ going to make you feel better.) But it does help, most of the time, and you try to make a habit of it. Making sure they're healthy, making sure they're happy. They like to play, more than you would expect, and you build sloppy little additions to their coop because you found a book on breeding and coloration, and that sounds kind of neat to follow through on.

It's something to look forward to, some kind of motivation to keep living day in and day out. At least it lets you go to bed without regretting your whole day. And Jas helps out.

You talk to your therapist about it. About the chickens, and about your jealousy over inheritance.

"As with all things, you shouldn't obsess over it. But it _is_ okay to be frustrated that you didn't get the opportunities you would have liked," she tells you.

"I don't know why I even want them," you mutter, aggravated all over again by your own feelings. Articulating them makes it worse, not better. It's always frustrating in the moment. (But you like when you go home after having done it, and you like to hear what she has to _say_ about the shit that you hated having to tell her.) "Opportunities aren't worth much if you're the type to squander them, anyway."

"What makes you think you'd squander them?"

"I just would, I always waste my own time. I've got nothing I'm passionate about."

"You've been taking care of the chickens, though, haven't you?"

You level her with a blank stare. "Does raising pets really count as a passion?"

She laughs lightly. "Pets? I'd think of them more as livestock. That's a career, you know. Maybe you could even help out at the local farm, again?"

There's something that lights behind your eyes, like silent fireworks going off past closed eyelids. Like the dancing specks of light in your sight are bursting for just one second, firecrackers, and you remember suddenly that you had done that once, before.

It's hazy. She… Hurt herself? No, Marnie helped when…

How long ago was it? You feel like the Joja-mart left town so recently.

You try to think back but your thoughts won't obey, won't dig any deeper down that well. All your mind wants to come up with is the thought that: she doesn't seem to like you, does she? Each time you see her in the street she averts her eyes, and you don't know why that feels so devastating when it's what you've come to expect from everyone - when you're in therapy precisely because you understand that you've kind of brought it on yourself.

Your therapist lets the quiet stretch for a long moment, giving you the chance to speak if you're going to, but you can't find any words. Eventually she says, "I won't try to minimize the stress of not having your own place, or of not being financially stable. But you don't owe the world itself your productivity. If you find a job, it doesn't have to be your life. As long as you can survive on it. In your free time, outside of work? You don't need to be doing _more_ work. You can be doing anything you like. It's your _free_ time. If that means chickens, that's fine. If it means video games, that's fine, too. You can do what makes you happy. Your goal in living is not to build a castle, it's just to have a home."

"It's not that easy," you grouse. "Even just having to work to get by is miserable. And then _nothing_ makes me happy. It's not about productivity."

"Isn't it? You spend so much time worrying about what you're creating and what you're leaving behind. If it's something that's important to you, I wonder if we can focus more on what part of that makes you happy, and find a more positive framework to give it?"

***

You tend to the chickens.

You don't know what else to do with your time.

And the miracle is - you start to feel good. Not always, not perpetually. But often. More than usual.

Neighbors talk to you on the street, you realize one day, with pleasant smiles on their faces. You aren't snapping at people as often. You aren't drinking as often. Sometimes they even ask about the chicken breeding, or about your small forays into carpentry.

You think about leaving behind an old farm to a grandchild. You think about the comfort of inheriting something, _anything_ , and not having to flounder for stability. Even if you don't want it, even if it takes you a long time to appreciate it, to need it. You think about what it would be like to grow up and have a safety net to fall back on.

You think about how badly you want to work hard, without knowing what to work hard _at._ You think about what it would be like if someone handed you a plot of land and a bag of seeds and said, "This."

It's hard to imagine it. But at the same time, you think of Marnie, letting you stay with her. You realize that it was the widest safety net she had available to cast. And you think about how much you owe her, but more than that, you start to think about what sort of net you could cast.

Someone who can't catch their own falling is in no position to be trying to help anyone else. You just aren't sure that's where you are, anymore.

Being broke and unemployed isn't a great place to be - but you aren't drinking yourself closer to the edge of a cliff anymore.

You still have moods, and bad days, and you still feel quite a bit like you _need_ your therapist, but you also have good days, and nice thoughts.

So you tend to the chickens, and you weave this net, and you think about Jas's future, and what you can do to make sure she has it better than you did.

***

The farmer is in the saloon.

You are having a drink, _a_ drink, and talking to Pam about some business connection she has for you - someone to sell eggs to that she visits a couple times a week on her bus route.

Clint and Emily are across the room on what you suspect is a tentative date night.

Nearby, Abigail is showing off crystals that she's dug up in the mines. Sebastian and Sam and the farmer are all crowding around her, faces alcohol-flushed, oohing and aahing. You're pretty sure they're being facetious; eventually Abigail swats them all away, and they burst into noisy laughter together.

It's endearing. You smile into your glass and nod along with whatever minor annoyance Pam is rambling to herself about, now.

You catch the farmer staring at you from the edge of her sight.

The joy slips from her face. She looks away but it's as if she's forgotten how to emote for a minute longer. Then she is back to forcing out laughter for her friends.

She looks at you throughout the night. You don't hide it when you catch her. Something inside you decides you can't leave first, and so you drink water for hours and you wait for her to finally go home.

Clint and Emily leave separately. Sam and Sebastian leave together, stumbling. Abigail offers to head out with the farmer and gets waved off and dismissed, and heads out by herself. The entire saloon slowly empties, until finally it is just the two of you, until Gus is sending furtive looks between you and her and the door and the clock.

When you step outside, the air is cold and refreshing. The stars are vivid, and the town is dead-quiet. So is the farmer, standing next to you.

"We're going the same way," you point out. She barely responds at all, only nodding. With that, the two of you begin your walk together; you towards Marnie's place and her towards her own.

It's awkward and uncomfortable. Not her presence itself, which you actually quite like, but the particular way that she keeps staring at the ground. There are much better things to stare at, you think.

"The stars are so bright," you offer, conversationally. "No light pollution out here."

You see those fireworks behind your eyelids again, those starburst lights that seem as if they are chipping away at something, but fade before they've finished the job. You shake it off. 

The way the farmer looks at you makes you think she's waiting for the catch. Like she thinks you're trying to trick her into thinking you're sociable. It's not a surprising attitude; you've seen plenty of it from other neighbors. (You're doing your best to prove them wrong. You're doing your best to be better.)

You just don't quite get it, with her. You don't really remember snapping at her in particular. You don't remember interacting with her much at all. In fact, most of what you remember is _her_ giving _you_ the cold shoulder.

"Yeah," she says, eventually. She begins, "Do you–" then her breath catches. The rest dies in her throat and she shakes her head. "–Never mind."

"Did I do something?" You ask, and it strikes you as a ridiculous question, even as you're asking it. Of course you did. You've been an asshole for most of your time in the valley and you know it.

"What do you mean?" She asks, guarded.

"I dunno," you admit, and your voice is a little gruff, but you don't know how to fix it. "I just know I've pissed a lot of people off, but I can't remember what I did to you. But every time I see you, you look…"

Well, you can't say she looks angry. You can never tell what she's thinking when she sees you.

After a pause, she says, "No. No, you didn't do anything. I…"

You wait. Eventually you prompt her to finish the thought. "You…?"

You're startled when she laughs. "I'm a black hole," she tells you.

You notice very suddenly how pretty she is. Her hair has come loose from what was once a tidy bun on one side with flowers woven into it, and there is dirt on her shorts and boots. Her eyes are deep blue, and they bore into you through her thick round glasses. It's as if when she looks at you, she actually sees something there, but doesn't know what to make of what she's found.

"I just take everything I can get and turn it into nothing," she says. "Isn't that vile?" It is not really a question.

She's going through something, that much is obvious. You have no idea what. The sentiment is such a polar opposite to what you always think yourself in circles about, and you are almost too baffled to be offended by someone spitting on their own good luck like this. All you can do is try to think of what your therapist would say.

You tell her, "I think… It's good if you're able to go after what you want. That's better than letting it pass you by. It's okay if it isn't permanent."

It doesn't appear to comfort her. You don't know why you want to so badly.

You admit, "I've thought that way before, too. Different, though. I always think I just consume and consume. Like I have no personality of my own. No goals or life or anything. Just a void."

She winces. You don't quite understand why.

"Finding what I want to do is the hard part. And not looking at every little thing like it might be the thing to fix me. It still is the hard part, because what works right now to keep me going won't always work. But knowing what you want and going after it from the start seems admirable. It's a waste to attract things and then not even let yourself be happy with them."

"I want everything to be permanent," she says. "I want things to never stop being enough for me."

"Temporary things still have value and meaning. You don't have to chain yourself to every single thing forever."

"What do you want to do?" She asks.

"What about you?" You counter.

She hesitates, like she isn't sure if she should really answer. But she wants your answer, and you think that's why she murmurs, "Well… I don't know. I think I just want to live comfortably, like I am now. I just want to enjoy what I have."

"That's allowed," you say, not really thinking. It catches her off guard, and she laughs.

A moment later she asks again, "What do you want?"

"The same thing, I think."

You are standing outside Marnie's, lingering at the edge of the path up to the door. You aren't sure how long the two of you have been talking here, neither pointing out that you should be parting ways, now.

Neither makes the first move away.

"Nothing's ever perfect, I guess, is what I've figured out. So you can't aim for that. But you can find any small thing and work on it," you tell her. "You just have to accept that sort of an imperfect way of living and stop thinking like you owe anyone anything else."

Neither of you makes the first move closer.

"I think it's too late," she murmurs. You feel her breath on your face. You don't know if she means that about your conversation or just the time.

Neither of you is first, because you both move at the same time.

The world goes bright when you kiss her. When she kisses you. Not in a rosy, metaphorically romantic way - although, that too - but in a literal way. Like firecrackers, fireworks, starbursts, there is _something_ that happens in your brain that should probably be alarming, but it feels _nice_. It feels like you're right on the edge of something, right on the cusp of remembering something.

She draws back. Her brow is furrowed. Lips pursed tight. Glasses a bit crooked, but eyes watching you with caution and fondness all at once.

"I don't think we can do this," she says, softly. "I already messed it up."

"Do - what?" You ask. You're both adults, you think. This doesn't have to take any particular shape, doesn't _have_ to be more than whatever she wants. You've never thought of yourself as the type who jumps into relationships from the deep-end, never thought of yourself as the type who would pursue anyone. "Messed up how?"

She watches you. Adjusts her glasses. Shakes her head. "Two wrongs don't make a right. When you sabotage something, when you break something, you don't _get_ to put it back together and pretend you did no harm just because you changed your mind."

And she walks away.

You go inside, and you wash the dishes in the sink. You shower, and you go to bed.

You dream of a starry sky above and below you. You dream you are dancing with a pretty girl in a white dress, and doves fly overhead, and jellyfish glow below, and the surface of the sea ripples with every step the two of you take together. Every time you try to look at her face, though, you just see starlight, or feathers, or flowers, or the glint of light on her glasses–

–until you finally wake up. Groggy and still tired, and hearing the sound of rain outside your window.

Rain never used to make you giddy. You don't know why it does, this year, but even waiting for the bus home from your therapist's office with damp shoulders is not so bad.

***

You're glad the weather is nice on the day of the Flower Dance, though.

You ask the farmer to dance, and enjoy the way she flusters and points to herself like she doesn't believe you could really mean _her_. (Abigail and Haley give good-natured whistles and jeers.)

You dance together, and it feels nostalgic. You always participate in the dance, even without a partner - some traditions are sacred, after all. But you can't remember the last time you had someone to draw back up to you as the lines of dancers come back together.

Her hand slips into yours. Your feet move like clockwork, one step to the next.

You want to talk to her, but don't want to bring up your last conversation here, don't want to remind her that she's already shut this down.

( _"This_ ," you think. How presumptuous.)

So instead you just dance, just enjoy the easy silence and the happy chirping at your heels.

You don't know why the rainbow of fairies at her feet don't surprise you, but they don't. You don't know when you started believing in magic, but you do. You just step around them, the same way you step around her feet, all of you dodging each other. Circling around each other, stepping away and back over the grass.

"I have this weird completionist thing," she tells you, as your bodies pull close together.

"I know," you tell her, amused, and think back to the way she used a cookbook as a checklist, the way she has hurled herself into every opportunity possible in this little valley.

She looks a bit mystified by you, but smiles softly. "And I think that sometimes it's really unhealthy."

"It isn't bad to seek out new experiences and dabble in a lot of different things," you offer, trying to guess her issue and preemptively soothe it. It doesn't surprise you when she shakes her head, but there is a distinct lack of shame or even bitterness where you know there once would have been.

"If you think that way all the time, it'll keep you from what you want," she says. She steps on your foot; you would have pretended not to notice but the pout she puts on makes you laugh. With a tone of indignance, she continues. "Like, I'll be really happy with something, but I'll think - it's a waste to stick with this when there are other things I should try. I'll feel this… Deep-seated _need_ to do everything, even if it's at the expense of what I know I would have liked."

"You need therapy."

Surprisingly, she doesn't take this as an insult. "Maybe," she concedes. "But - doing everything is a part of who I am. If that changes, do I?"

That, you think, is probably something better answered _by_ a therapist, but you tilt your head to the side and say, "No?"

She hums, and the two of you move together in a comfortable silence until the dance is done.

***

You watch her buy more flowers than she can carry as the festival is winding down.

When you offer to help, she accepts, and so as the sun sets, the two of you walk back to her farm with your arms weighed down by buckets of flowers.

"I'm trying to get into decorating," she tells you, eyes straight-forward as if she can pretend your earlier conversation hadn't happened as long as she doesn't make eye contact. "Farm's running smooth, so I figure now's the time to make it pretty."

"I'm sure it'll look great," you tell her.

"I think I'm - going to try therapy. Like you said. Not, like, just because you said it. But because I've been trying really hard to just tell myself I have to be happy because of all the opportunities I've had that other people don't have. And it's not working."

You stay quiet, because intuition tells you she has more to say. She looks at you from the edge of her sight.

"Sometimes it works. A lot of times it works. But it's like - when things are good, I'll get these… Impulses, or suddenly fall into these weird thought patterns that ruin it. Like… Walking along, perfectly happy, and then suddenly falling into a pit that makes me think in different ways, and those new ways of thinking mess it all up."

You nod. "I hope it helps," you say, sincerely.

"Me too. I'm nervous. I've never been to therapy or anything."

You shrug and try to make it sound nonthreatening. "You talk, they talk, you learn coping skills and ways to break yourself out of unhealthy habits or thought patterns. It's just guidance."

"Like a teacher?"

"Sort of."

She hums. You listen to both of your footsteps, plodding through the dirt pathway. You pass Marnie's house together. On her farm, the path becomes paved. You walk down the aisle, with flowers to either side of you, and it shimmers and shines behind your eyes so brightly that you have to stop and scrub at them.

She seems grateful for the short break, anyway, and sets down her own bucket of flowers on the pavement.

"I want to decorate the farm and make it - somewhere pretty. Somewhere I like to just _look at_. Even if it means I don't have as much space for the fields."

You look out at the strange little huts scattered throughout the fields; at the fairies slowly shuffling inside them for the night. Bright, bright, bright.

"I think I'm going to stop growing every single thing that's in season, every season. I'm going to specialize more instead of just trying to maximize revenue and variety at the same time."

You pick up the flowers, and she picks up hers.

"I used to think I needed to make sure this farm was perfect. I got it for nothing, and that's - it's not fair. I owe it to everyone who has less, and I owe it to my grandfather, to make the most of it. To do the most, grow the most, sell the most, make the most profit. Right?"

It's rhetorical, you can tell.

"But as long as I break even, I'll be good. I don't need to have everything, or try everything, or do everything, just because the option exists. It's okay to just focus on what makes me happy. Right?"

This time it's not. She looks at you expectantly. "Yep, basically."

She laughs, and it comes out awkward. "Sorry. I know that was a lot to dump on you out of nowhere."

"It's not out of nowhere," you say, but have no idea why.

She looks amused.

In front of her house, she gestures for you to set your flowers beside the steps. The porch light glows orange, and you realize that the sky is dark and the stars are out.

They shine so bright, clustered close together like there are twice as many out, tonight.

You try to kiss her again. It seems like something that should be so easy. She is right there, standing much closer than anyone else would. You can feel the warm radiating off of her body, you can imagine that she will lean in with you again.

But she holds a hand between your mouth and hers and shakes her head.

"I do like you, you know," you tell her. You don't mean to be pushy, but it seems like something worth clarifying.

"I know," she murmurs.

It isn't the answer you'd hoped for, but it _is_ an answer. So you take it with as much dignity as you can. You nod, and you leave her alone.

***

You don't see much of the farmer, for a while. You wonder if she's followed through and arranged herself a therapist, but it's hardly any of your business to ask. (Especially not after…)

You focus on your own life. You tend to your chickens, you do chores around the house. You lounge in the sun as the weather warms up, and some nights you sit on the docks and look at the sky and the lake and all the lights in them both.

The next time you see her is the next town festival. Her hair is loose, and she is wearing a blue two-piece swimsuit - a frilly skirt and a bikini-top with a bow. She is splashing in the shallow waves with Abigail.

You try not to be a creep, but find yourself discreetly watching all the same as you sip at your soda from the shade of the trees.

Not discreetly enough, apparently, because she has a knowing look on her face when she sidles up to you, later in the day. Her arms are still dripping and her skin has goosebumps in the shade, because apparently she did not think to bring dry clothes or even a towel. Her hair looks heavy, wet and sticking to her back.

"Do you want my hoodie?" You ask, because even as someone who is beginning to consider themselves a proper adult, you still like to wear it all year round like some kind of slobby teenager.

Unfortunately, you ask this at the exact moment that she asks you, "Did I ever tell you that I'm a magician's apprentice?"

The two of you puff out identical laughs under your breath.

You shrug out of your hoodie. She says, "He's real stingy about what he'll actually teach me, but I pestered him a _ton_ to learn a new spell." When you drape your hoodie over her shoulders, she warns you, "It's going to get wet."

Her hands still come up to hold it in place, wearing it almost like a shawl. There's always going to be something radiant about a pretty girl in a swimsuit - or a pretty girl wearing your clothes. You have to look away, but wave a hand to dismiss her concern.

"What sort of spell?" You ask, humoring her.

"My therapist says that you can't always undo the unfair stuff you've done," she says. "Sometimes you just have to move on and accept that the damage is done and the only direction is forward."

"I guess therapists aren't prepared to take magic into consideration."

She laughs. "No, well… I don't know. I'm still going to just deal with the fall out. I think there will be fall out. But there _are_ parts I can undo."

"Is that what's best?"

She is quiet for so long that you have to look back to her. She seems small, holding her hoodie around her, shrinking inside of it. "I don't know. Maybe it's selfish."

You don't have enough information to pass judgment, and besides, the concept of magic is still over your head. You just shrug. "Only you can decide."

"The problem was that I shouldn't have decided in the first place. So it's like a - do two wrongs make a right sort of thing. Is it right to undo a decision that I didn't have the right to make? After someone has already dealt with the results of it?"

"Can't you ask them what they'd prefer?"

She considers this for a long moment. You look away from her, out to the crowd of villagers enjoying the sun and the soup.

You feel her fingers lace with yours. Returning to grip comes easily; you're surprised you don't feel flustered.

"If someone changed your memories," she begins, her voice slow and wavering.

Your skin feels cold, suddenly. Your chest feels hollow and it makes the beating of your heart deafening. You hardly understand how you can hear her over the sound of it, when she is hardly at a whisper, when the rest of the crowd is still bustling so close by.

"And things _did_ get better for you, after they had done that… Would you want to remember?"

You're struck with the impulse to wrench your hand away from hers, but can't make yourself move.

And yet, when she slips her hand from yours and begins to draw away, you reach for her. Light shifts over her face in flecks, filtering through the trees overhead. You watch the shadows and light on her cheeks and in her eyes.

"What did you do?" You ask. (Your voice usually comes out gruff when you don't mean it to. You are baffled that it doesn't happen, now.)

She doesn't try to step away again. You are still holding her hand, but her fingers no longer curl around yours. She turns her head, like she cannot bear to look at you. "Do you want to know?"

You can't formulate an answer. You just stare at her, acutely aware of how little you know her.

You let her hand fall from yours.

When she leaves the festival early, she is chased by a dozen stares and curious whispers. All you can do is stare at the way her wet hair leaves a damp spot on the back of your hoodie and blink back sun-spots.

***

When you lay on the floor in your room and stare up at the ceiling, you feel as if you can hardly think straight. You keep mulling over what you know, turning over the facts again and again as if there is more detail hidden on their underside.

She used magic on you - of some kind. Changed your memories.

There should be some kind of conclusion you can draw from this, but there isn't. It's just that same revelation, that same information, getting smoother and smoother and shinier and shinier, like a pebble in a rock tumbler.

When you lay on the couch in your therapists office and stare up at her ceiling, you have a bit of an easier time with it.

Unfortunately, therapists really are not prepared to take magic into consideration.

You want to know. You want to know why there are blinding lights behind your eyes sometimes, when you look at her.

But there is a part of you that fears what she must fear. Everything that's better now - if it all came from forgetting something, who's to say you won't fall back into old habits?

You can only explain some of this thought process, some of the concern. You know it would sound absurd, but you've seen the fairies and you've seen the lights, and you _know_ that it's real.

"You shouldn't seek to trigger yourself like some kind of test," your therapist offers. "That might not be productive, and whether you overcome a relapse or fall into it, putting yourself in the situation to find out is still giving it too much power and attention in your own life."

You nod. You count the tiles on the ceiling.

"But there are times that things are going to trigger you in some way, and relapses are a part of recovery. It's all about moderation."

She thinks this is about drinking.

But the truth is, you haven't had a drink in months. Soda helps tide the craving. You're not sure if it's the caffeine or the sugar or just the comfort of holding a can, but it works for you. You've been gaining weight. You've also been fine with gaining weight. You think that's worth something.

What you're worried about isn't a relapse into drinking. (Mostly. Mostly, you are not worried about this.)

You don't exactly _know_ what you're afraid of relapsing back into.

It's hard to imagine being as angry as you used to be. As bitter and resentful. As bored and restless and _angry_ about it.

So then, you think, if you aren't afraid of falling back into these mindsets and patterns… What are you afraid of?

***

You try to see her sooner than the next festival. You swing by her farm, but she doesn't answer her door. It's a small town, and you keep an eye out for her, but you don't see her. Some nights you swing by the saloon, just in case. Some days you walk to the beach and back.

That's as much as you can do. You don't want to be a stalker - although you don't feel terribly remorseful at the idea, given that she's already crossed some boundaries, apparently.

You wonder which ranks as a worse offense, stalking someone, or erasing someone's memories? (You are trying to level the playing field, here. You are trying to put yourself on equal footing with her to make sense of why you are not angrier, and it's flimsy at best.)

She never misses a festival; just her leaving the luau early had been the talk of the town for a week.

She misses the dance of the moonlight jellies.

You sit on the dock by yourself and watch them glow beneath the surface. You watch the water distort the shape of them and watch the glow shift and stretch under the waves.

Sam, Abigail, and Sebastian are drinking together in a cluster, right at the edge of the docks. You watch them, and it feels like rocks rattling around in your head. Smoother and smoother, shinier and shinier.

You leave early.

The feeling of your foot stepping from wooden docks to sinking sand feels infinite. You sink in, you feel like you'll sink forever, you almost lose your footing, and you don't know why.

You think about drinking, but you haven't kept alcohol in the house for months and the stores aren't open this late. You don't even want to drink for the usual reason - you just feel like you are on the cusp of something. Like you are balancing on a delicate edge, and you want something to make you lose your balance.

At least you can do half of what you used to; you walk to the lake.

You feel stupid, leaving a once-a-year sight for the view you can visit every day.

You feel less stupid when you see a figure on the dock, laying on her back and staring up at the moon.

You have to walk slowly and carefully. You still feel off balance. You don't want to fall into the lake. You step over her and look down.

Her hair is splayed out in messy braids. Her shirt is tied into a crop top and her shorts are unbuttoned. Her glasses slide out of place as she cranes her head back to look up at you, upside-down.

She is still wearing your hoodie.

"You want your spot back?" She asks.

"Nope," you say. "You want to go see the jellies?"

"Yep," she says.

You hold a hand to help her up. She doesn't let go the whole way back. When the two of you pass the other villagers, she waves with her free hand.

If they are leaving, it must be over. The lights beneath the sea must have faded away. (You don't point this out. She doesn't either.)

You walk to the beach, hand-in-hand. When you get there, it is dark. The only light is the reflection of the moon on the waves, bending and refracting. It's enough light to make out the wistful look on her face.

You think about leaning over and pressing a kiss to her hair.

And then you remember.

You remember her asking you to dance, face flushed with alcohol. You remember dancing in the sand, feeling silly but hardly caring who saw. The memory feels like wave crashing over you, ice-cold and too dark to see coming, then suddenly warm and bright and dry again.

It's a firecracker, and then another. Flowers on her front porch and flowers in a bouquet. A mermaid's pendant and a white wedding dress - a hoodie draped over her shoulders, a veil draped over her shoulders. Dancing, and dancing, and dancing, and drinking, and silent winces, and sitting on the porch, eating lunch with a wizard.

One after the other the memories flick past your eyes and slot themselves into your mind, unremarkable and new and old all at once.

It's supernova, an exploding star, all the lights that have been at the edge of your sight, at the edge of your mind, bursting at once until you are just—

—Standing on the beach, with the woman that you married.

You are a black hole, and she has no idea; she only tilts her head to look at you, curious. Gives your hand a tentative squeeze.

Asks, "Are you alright?"

"No," you answer.

You are a black hole, but not at all in the way you used to think. You are a black hole in a way that is not a coherent metaphor, in a way that you cannot repeat to yourself over and over until you are miserable, anymore. You are a black hole in a way that makes you think: _Sure, I mean, why not?_

Sure.

"I want to come work on your farm," you blurt out.

She makes a face; one you have seen a hundred times. She does not know what to make of you, and is torn between amusement and utter confusion.

"Again," you add.

She squints.

"And I want to fight sometimes. About what you did, first. About smaller, stupid things, later."

She tries to pull her hand away from you, and you fight the impulse to squeeze. You let her draw back, and you watch the way she hugs her arms in your hoodie like it's a comfort to her.

"I didn't learn the spell," she says, as if this could stop you from remembering.

"I want to get married," you say, like a counter argument. She turns her head, but her eyes still track you, sidelong. You think to add: "Again."

"I'm sorry," she says, sounding miserable and desperate.

"I—"

"—I want to get better," she interrupts, apparently deciding that if she cannot stop you, the next best thing is to imitate you.

You murmur, "Me too."

You don't know which of you reaches out first; it feels like instinct to close the gap and join hands again.

**Author's Note:**

> it's okay to play games however you enjoy them. sometimes that means you marry the same person every single time, even though there are like 12 other people that would make a more well-adjusted partner. sometimes that means modding the game. do your dreams.


End file.
